Activists of the environmental NGO Agent Green Association staged a protest today in Valea Cerbului - in the Bucegi Natural Park against the "massive" timber logging activities in this protected area, accusing the ill-conceived policies that have allowed local resources to be subjected to such a "massacre".
"Our protest today is because we cannot accept the bad policies that allowed this massacre in Bucegi, Romania's most beloved and most visited massif. It's a shame what we found here. An arid moon-like landscape. The Environment Ministry must put an end to the robbery and join forces with the Tourism Ministry for tourist areas and access areas to tourist destinations to no longer look like bomb-stricken," said Agent Green campaign coordinator Veronica Tulpan, according to a statement posted on the association's Facebook page.
The NGO accuses that for months now, Valea Cerbului - which provides the main tourist access route to Omu Peak and stands under quadruple national and international protection as a natural park, a Natura 2000 site, Nature Reserve (the alpine slope Abruptul Prahovean) and as home to virgin forests mapped in the PIN-MATRA inventory from in 2004 has been the site of brutal timber felling, with highly valuable trees being logged and removed on water-soaked terrain, on dirt roads more than one meter deep and along riverbeds, leaving behind a trail of other trees hit by the trunks felled and dragged along.
"On paper, Romania is doing well in terms of protected areas, with such areas virtually accounting for 23 percent of the country's surface. Yet in reality only a tiny 1 percent is strictly protected. This is close to nothing, while the paradise becomes a ghastly place one has no reason to return to. In the Bucegi Massif they put under protection strictly the alpine area above the tree line and only too little of the forest area. Valea Cerbului and all the valleys with tourist routes, with a role in the protection of biodiversity, water sources, human settlements and infrastructure should be put under strict protection," said Agent Green president Gabriel Paun.
Under these circumstances, the association representatives are asking the Environment Ministry to transform the Bucegi Massif from Natural Park into National Park and put at least 90 percent of the forests in this area - the entire Valea Cerbului and all the valleys with tourist routes included - under strict protection; they also request the Forest Guard to investigate compliance with forestry regulations in force at the Bucegi timber facility run by the company that operates in Valea Cerbului.
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