Tag Archives: primeval

Europe’s Natural Heritage Disappearing Before Our Eyes – Romania

Paper submitted by EuroNatur Foundation and Agent Green to the “8th International NGO Forum on World Heritage at Risk” – World Heritage Watch

When one thinks of the natural wonders of Europe, Romania does not necessarily spring to mind as a country home to some of the largest areas of forests of outstanding universal value. However, hosting at least 500,000 hectares of potential primary and old-growth forests (Schickhofer and Schwarz 2019), Romania is easily home to the lion’s share of intact forests in the European Union outside of Scandinavia. Few would appreciate that Romania is home to some of the largest and healthiest populations of large carnivores – bears, wolves and lynx – in all of Europe. However, these ancient forests are being logged before the eyes of the European Union (EU), even at a time when the European Commission has communicated its intent to step up action to protect and restore the world’s forests. Logging, both legal and illegal, is occurring in Natura 2000 sites, national parks and in the buffer zones of UNESCO World Heritage areas, immediately adjacent to the core inscribed properties. The impacts on the integrity of the World Heritage property are undeniable.

In 2007, Europe’s ancient beech forests were first inscribed in the World Heritage List, with sites in Slovakia and the Ukraine forming a cross-border property Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians. This site was extended to Germany in 2011, and then 10 countries successfully added further forest sites to the property – now known as Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe – in 2017. This uniquely complex serial site now covers 92,023 ha across more than 40 protected areas located in 12 European countries. The Romanian component of this 2017 extension (23,983 ha) disproportionately comprised almost 40% of the 10-country addition (61,660 ha) to the existing site. In total, Romanian forests make up 26% of the entire 12- country World Heritage listing, making it by far the largest contribution from a country in the EU.

These component areas were added to the World Heritage List under criteria (ix) of the World Heritage Convention as they are “outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals”. The Romanian components are described, amongst other rich ecological and biodiversity values, as including important refuges of virgin forests, being of a high degree of naturalness, and supporting a vast array of plants and animals including endemic, rare and threatened species (Kirchmeir and Kovarovics 2016).

However, the Romanian forest sites included in the list certainly do not represent all forests of outstanding universal value. Many forests sites of equal natural value as those included in the property are being logged and under threat from future logging activities.

Timeline of significant related World Heritage events

2017 Romania’s forest areas added to Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe World Heritage Listing (Decision 41 COM 8B.7)

2018 Informal IUCN Field Trip to Domogled – Valea Cernei and Semenic – Cheile Carasului National Parks – visits to logging sites adjacent to World Heritage areas

July 2019 Noting with concern, the World Heritage Committee puts Romania on notice for allowing logging within buffer zones of the Romanian components of the World Heritage property. World Heritage Committee requests a Reactive Mission to Romania to assess the situation (Decision 43 COM 7B.13)

Nov. 2019 World Heritage Centre/IUCN Reactive Mission to Romania. Further forest parcels adjacent to the World Heritage auctioned by Romsilva, Romania’s state forest agency only 10 days after the mission is due in Romania.

For decades, scientists and conservationists have been raising the alarm about the scale and intensity of logging in Romania and the government’s abject lack of serious commitment to protecting natural values. The situation today, where ancient forests of outstanding universal value continue to be logged, is the consequence of years of terrible forest governance – over-logging, illegal logging, corruption, mismanagement and a ubiquitous defiance of the rule of law. Even in 2017, when the Romanian sites were nominated to be listed, IUCN and World Heritage Centre specialists raised concern over the Romanian government’s lack of commitment to the World Heritage Convention and the protection of outstanding universal values of natural sites.

As a result, commercial logging which threatens the integrity of the UNESCO site through habitat fragmentation and loss continues. At the time of writing, it has been revealed that more forest areas within the UNESCO buffer zone and adjacent the UNESCO listed site – forests containing values equivalent to those within the UNESCO site – will be auctioned at the end of November 2019 and logged in 2020.

Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park – a case of worse practice

Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park in south-west Romania harbours towering limestone mountain peaks, natural thermal springs, deep gorges, spectacular waterfalls, impressive cave systems, large tracts of ancient, pristine forests and critical habitat for a plethora of protected plants and animals. It contains three component parts of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe World Heritage site: Coronini – Bedina, Iauna Craiovei and Ciucevele Cernei. The entire national park outside of the core UNESCO site constitutes the formal buffer zone of the site. The situation in Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park is probably the best understood and also the most serious in regards to commercial logging adjacent the World Heritage site and within the site’s formal buffer zone.

Brutal road construction and logging in old growth forest in Radoteasa valley in Romania’s Domogled National Park (buffer zone of the World Heritage site).

Park management staff openly talk about commercial logging within the park as if it is completely normal. Forest management is intense and commercially driven. It is mainly based upon “progressive cutting” (stepwise removal of all trees of a forest parcel over a period of 10 years) or “conservation logging” (cutting of openings in the forest to stimulate growth of young trees). This “progressive cutting” simply means that rather than an area being completely cut in one go, it is cut over a period of about 10 to 15 years. According to the World Heritage Centre, “a buffer zone is an area surrounding the nominated property which has complementary legal and / or customary restrictions placed on its use and development to give an added layer of protection to the property” (UNESCO WHC, 2017).

In many parts of the park, virgin forests that are supposed to be protected under Romanian law but have not yet gone through the difficult bureaucratic process of listing them, are illegally logged without effective criminal prosecution. Even in the strict non-intervention zones of the park, illegal logging has taken place.
In 2017, logging and road cutting was identified in virgin forests in the upper catchment of the pristine Cerna River. More recently, excursions to the park – including with members of the European Parliament, and during an informal visit with the European director of IUCN – have revealed firsthand the devastating commercial logging within the park. Logging progresses into the remotest areas of the park where the last strongholds of ancient beech forests are found. Only in the spring of 2017, a new logging road was cut in the Radoteasa valley, in the middle of a large untouched forest landscape, which is located between two UNESCO World Heritage site component parts.

As has been previously communicated to IUCN and the World Heritage Centre, logging is happening at the immediate border of the UNESCO World Heritage site. In November 2019 Romanian conservationists witnessed recent logging activity at the border of the Iauna-Craiova component part of the UNESCO World Heritage property. The beech forests neighbouring the property – and earmarked for logging – are similar to the forest inside the World Heritage component part and share the same outstanding universal value. Even though they exist within the national park, they are not protected from logging.

Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park is also a designated EU Natura 2000 site. Nevertheless, irreplaceable primary and old-growth forests are continuously being degraded and deteriorated with approval of the national park administration and Romsilva, Romania’s state forestry agency.

These future logging plans, supported by the previous Romanian government, represent a clear disregard for UNESCO values and for the World Heritage Convention. It is not clear yet how the new government will deal with the progressing logging issue in Romania’s protected areas. Any deliberate damage to a component part in one of the participating countries threatens the 12 country property as a whole and the Romanian government’s ongoing logging plans, which undermine the entire property, could lead to the property being listed “In Danger” in the future.

Romania’s ancient forests are a true treasure of European natural and world heritage. Urgent intervention is required to ensure that as much of what remains of them is protected for all time.

In addition, the issue of logging in buffer zones of World Heritage Areas is not isolated to the Romanian World Heritage component sites.

We therefore request the World Heritage Committee to urge the World Heritage Centre and advisory bodies to set standards for buffer zone management that clearly prohibit industrial exploitation use of recourses – such as commercial logging – within buffer zones of World Heritage properties. Natural habitats deserve reliable protection also in buffer zones, in particular when they are of similar value like the ones included in the UNESCO properties itself.

We encourage the World Heritage Committee to support the protection of Romania’s ancient beech forests of outstanding universal value.
We respectfully urge the WHC to request the Romanian government to uphold the values of the World Heritage Convention through the following actions:

· All logging permits in old-growth and primary forests in national parks and UNESCO World Heritage site buffer zones to be cancelled and logging activities to be stopped immediately;
· All old-growth and primary forests in the national park and UNESCO World Heritage site buffer zones be preserved as designated non-intervention areas (eg. core zones enlarged, UNESCO sites expanded, National Catalogue of Virgin Forests properly implemented). As almost all forests within the UNESCO buffer zones are under the management and ownership of the Romanian state, this should be achievable without the need for financial compensation for private land owners;
· National Parks and UNESCO World Heritage sites be promoted as places where nature conservation is paramount and adequately funded and world’s best practice management prioritises the protection, promotion and restoration of natural ecosystems, not the exploitation of natural resources.

Fact finding trip in November 2018 with IUCN into threatened Radoteasa valley in Cernisoara Forest in buffer zone of Domogled National Park. According to documents issued by State Forstry Romsilva, also the remaining old growth forest should be logged stepwise in the next years.
The old growth and primary beech forest in the buffer zone of Domogled National Park / UNESCO Natural Heritage is identical with the protected beech forest in the core zone / UNESCO site. But these precious ecosytems lack any protection.

References

European Commission (2019). EU Communication (2019) on Stepping up EU Action to Protect and Restore the World’s Forests, 23 July 2019, viewed 6 November 2019,
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/forests/eu_comm_2019.htm

Kirchmeir, H. and Kovarovics, A. (eds.) (2016). Nomination Dossier “Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe” as extension to the existing Natural World Heritage Site “Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and the Ancient Beech Forests of Germany” (1133bis). Klagenfurt, 409p

Schickhofer, M. and Schwarz, U. (2019). PRIMOFARO. Inventory of Potential Primary and Old-Growth Forest Areas in Romania. Report for EuroNatur.

UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2017). Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention

 

 

Environmental massacre in Albania’s primary forests

Rampant illegal logging in Albania’s biggest national park is ravaging primeval woodland protected by UNESCO

In 2016, Albania imposed a 10-year moratorium on logging in all its forests and banned timber exports. The move followed decades of untrammelled exploitation that had denuded the country’s once-lush slopes and hastened erosion.

However, despite a total ban on logging and registration of parts of Albania’s biggest national park Shebenik-Jabllanice as a UNESCO world heritage site, criminal networks are ravaging its primeval forests to supply logs to the domestic firewood market, an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, reveals.

According to Global Forest Watch the forest cover of Albania went down to 17 per cent of the country (2010). One of the biggest chunks of remaining woodland is in the Shebenik-Jabllanice National Park, which accounts for 70 per cent of Albania’s biodiversity, according to the Albanian Ecology Club conservation group.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) published a in depth feature story about the criminal operations in the national park and UNESCO world heritage site. 
You can read the full story here.

Investigation Video: Romania’s State Forestry Enterprise Caught Illegally Logging in National Park

Romania – Europe’s largest tracts of old growth forests in Romania are being deliberately and illegally destroyed by state forest agency Romsilva. A new video investigation reveals hard proof of large scale forest devastation in Calimani National Park in the eastern Carpathians. Unofficially, in 2017 alone, about 70.000m3 of wood were logged in the protected area, an equivalent of 200 ha of old growth forests.

“The situation in Calimani National Park is completely out of control. The level of mismanagement and nature destruction, driven by Romsilva, is unacceptable,“ Agent Green and EuroNatur Foundation conclude. They urgently call on the Romanian Ministry for Environment to immediately dismiss Romsilva from managing protected areas, to stop any industrial logging in national parks and to take decisive action to save the EU’s largest wild forest ecosystems.

Agent Green investigator and journalist Andrei Ciurcanu visited the Calimani National Park during several investigations between 2017 and 2018. He detected scandalous devastation in the middle of the protected area: large clearcuts, brutally built forest roads, funicular lines, polluted and destroyed alpine river beds and muddy valley bottoms cleared for vast wood depots – just adjacent touristic trails. The responsibility for this disaster lies with Romsilva, who controls the national park management and administers wood exploitation in the national park.

OUT OF CONTROL #ep4 Calimani National Park from AGENT GREEN on Vimeo.

Besides the massive loss of trees, the investigation video also shows how the logs are being dragged through river beds, thereby destroying these once pure freshwater ecosystems. The logging spreads over several square kilometers and whole mountain ranges are now clear cut.

National park rangers are familiar with these illegal practices. But they obviously fear losing their job if they would administer fines. A forester, who talks only on the protection of his identity, gives an example of the functioning of the malicious system: 20 years ago, after a large wind-fell, „shady things“ happened. „Romsilva people promised wood to a Turkish company. They stalled removal of bark beetle infested trees for almost 2 years. This allowed the bark beetle to spread. At the end they could log twice as much as planned.“ This gigantic logging area is still an enormous ecological wound and forest recovery is slow because of the size of the clearing.

Peter Abran was a member of the park’s Scientific Council and a specialist of Mures Environmental Agency. He knew about the destruction and claims that he and other members were dismissed from the council after opposing logging inside the park. During a phone interview with Agent Green, Abran confirms that logging in parts of the park is illegal because no environmental permit has been issued since 2010: “Romsilva illegally exploited the forest in the national park. No ministerial order allows the logging.“

The National Environmental Guard specialists confirmed Abran’s allegations. After a survey scheduled this year, the Guard officials stated that logging plans did not have an environmental permit and Romsilva has to obey the regulations regarding the conservation and protection of nature inside the national park.

“Environmental Minister Gratiela Gavrilescu must act now! Romsilva is acting like the gravedigger of our precious natural forests. These forests are our pride and important for water, air, recreation and are crucial to the survival of many endangered species. Romsilva’s logging has become a national security threat. Thus Romsilva has to be dismissed from the management of protected areas immediately. Romania will hold the EU-presidency in 2019. The forest destruction shadow must be removed beforehand to avoid shaming our nation,” says Gabriel Paun, President of Agent Green.

“The logging tragedy in Romania has been watched and ignored by many key decision makers for way too long. This is Europe’s prime nature crisis. Climate change will increasingly affect our forests with droughts and wildfires, as we experienced already last summer. Therefore we need to preserve all remaining intact natural forests! A few weeks before the critical Katowice Climate Change Conference will take place we call on the EU and the world to look at Romania and become active!“

Agent Green and EuroNatur urge the Romanian Environmental Minister to immediately stop commercial logging in national parks, dismiss Romsilva from managing national parks and other protected areas, implement modern and nature conservation oriented management systems, provide adequate funds to properly manage protected areas (including Natura 2000 sites) and to compensate private land owners in protected areas for nature conservation objectives.

Today, a new petition was launched, addressing the Romanian Prime Minister, who will hold the Presidency of the EU-Council in the first half of 2019. The petition calls for immediate action to halt the destruction of Europe’s last large virgin forests in Romania. It will be delivered to the Romanian Government and forwarded to the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Here you can access the petition page.

The episodes #1, 2, and 3 of the “Out of Control” series can be viewed here.

Investigator Andrei Ciurcanu in wounded Calimani national park.
Devastation of protected nature in Romania’s Calimani national park.