A new story published by Lush reports about the race to protect Romania’s primeval forests, deemed by the World Heritage Committee as being of ‘outstanding universal value’ from further destruction by logging. But behind scenes, regulators are stalling and with corruption in the mix, the issue is a complex one, writes investigator Katy Jenkyns for Lush.
Romania contains over half of all remaining tracts of pristine forest in the EU – home to wolf, brown bear, lynx and countless bird and plant species. Full of ancient energy surrounded by the rustle and twitch of life, birdsong in spring, animal tracks over winter snows, the trees are mainly European beech alongside other species such as oak, fir, elm, and maple.
Some of these trees are over 400-years-old, standing amongst younger saplings in a cycle of decay and renewal that takes place without any human intervention. Yet these untouched forests have become a fierce battleground.
It’s not just about biodiversity. Primeval forest locks down far more carbon than managed forest and is therefore significant in terms of climate change mitigation, but shockingly Romania has no up-to-date and inclusive inventory of where these unique areas of wilderness actually are, nor adequate regulatory systems in place to protect them.
