For more than 80 years every first week of April Bulgaria marks “Forest Week”. In recent yeast there is ever less festivity in this event and growing worries as to the future of Bulgaria’s forests. One third of the territory of Bulgaria is covered by woodlands, which places this country 9th in Europe after countries such as Sweden, Spain, France and Germany.
However trees on this territory of 3.4 million hectares are constantly decreasing. According to some nature-protection organizations woodland areas in Bulgaria in the last 15 years have shrunk by 15%. Fires, criminal felling and reluctant re-forestation are the reasons for this alarming fact.
In the last 50 years some 1.5 million hectares of woodland species have been planted in Bulgaria, but the pace of re-planting is slowing down. In 2004 there have been planted 46 thousand hectares, but in 2005 replanted areas are only 10 thousand hectares, in 2006 – only 6.5 thousand hectares.
It is maintained that most of the state-run forestry farms earn very little and so have no means for replanting. Again due to the lack of money there are not a sufficient number of roads to go deep into the forests and for that reason, timber suitable for processing in those parts becomes inaccessible and is left to rot. On the other hand the great demand for wood stimulated the easy and speedy clear-felling at the most easily accessible places, causing bald spots all over a slope.
Yet Bulgarian forests are a treasure truly worth preserving and augmenting. We should mark here that most of Bulgarian woodlands are of a natural origin. Over 4% of them are even forests unattained by any kind of human activity.
According to the World Wildlife Fund /WWF/ the woodlands of Bulgaria are the home of 43 species of endangered animals and plants and about 80% of the potential Bulgarian sites to enter the NATURA 2000 European environmental network. However, only 10% of the forest fund is for the time being included in territories under protection.
According to a report of the WWF on illegal felling in Bulgaria from 2005, 45% of all the timber obtained in Bulgaria has been acquired illegally. The enhanced developments in tourism and construction works are among the factors promoting criminal felling. The aggression of tourism-oriented construction inflicts double damage on forests. On the one hand there is a growing appetite for introducing more tourist centers and ski-tracks ever further into the heart of the mountains, even into protected territories; and that is always related to cutting many trees and affecting watersheds, which speeds up erosion and the death of other forest parts. On the other hand the very construction of these resorts requires more and more wood and the vicious circle is thus closing over Bulgarian forests, adding the fact that control on these processes is still far from the necessary standard.
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Year after year the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests declares as its priority the increase of woodland territories and the conducting of a rescue reform in forestry. It is expected that the new Bill on Forests would come into force as of the beginning of 2008. It envisages the inauguration of a National market for the trade of timber; the increase of financing in the forestry sector and a facilitated investment procedure for it. The changes in the Bill on Hunting and the protection of game envisage that the 136 state-run hunting domains in this country to be given for rent for a period of at least 15 years.