A large-scale afforestation campaign kicks off in Romania

Authorities in Romania have kicked off a national afforestation campaign under the patronage of the countrys president, Klaus Iohannis

Mihai Pelin, 09.03.2020, 13:50

Romania’s first large-scale afforestation
campaign in the past decade kicked off last week. The authorities here believe
the project will allow them to plant over 50 million saplings and rebuild
roughly 2 thousand forests.

The campaign, which unfolds under a
suggestive title, ‘A Forest As Big As A Country’, involves the opening of
roughly 13 thousand afforestation sites all over the country. The project
started in Dambovita county, southern Romania, in the presence of the country’s
president Klaus Iohannis, who emphasized the importance of these forests for a
clean environment and the fact that Romania needs to protect its virgin
forests. According to the president, ‘illegal logging is unacceptable in the 21st
century’.

Klaus Iohannis: I am asking
the Prime Minister and the government members to find new instruments to
protect Romania’s forests. The instruments created and employed by the previous
governments proved to be useless and improperly applied.

The campaign starts off against the
background of massive illegal logging conducted in the past years, when Romania
has lost millions of cubic meters of wood. Scores of illegal logging operations
have been reported almost on a daily basis in recent years. Forest rangers have
been killed in the line of duty, two of them last year alone; 650 of these
forest rangers have become victims of aggression while monitoring illegal
logging operations.

As the authorities failed to stop
the phenomenon, several conservationist NGOs filed complaints with the European
Commission and an infringement procedure was launched against Romania in
February. The measure was taken due to the flawed legislation, which prevents
the proper monitoring of illegal logging activities carried out in Romania’s
forests.

(translated by bill)