In one of their most popular songs, Bulgarians praise the beauty of their forests.  These spaces have always been objects of great respect, which explains why people react so strongly when they come across areas in the mountains that have been completely cleared of all trees.  Out on an excursion one day, professor of mathematics and passionate mountaineer Mihail Konstantinov discovered a number of these places and it got him angry.  He insists that radical treatment is needed to cure this chronic ill:  and is calling for a moratorium on logging, if not across the board then at least in Bulgaria’s beech forests, which are important for the country’s water resources.

Describing the situation as he sees it, Professor Konstantinov says: “There’s a Mafia out there, and they’re completely out of control.  They make a fortune exporting the timber.  But the Roma people also cut down large numbers of trees.  They’re driven to destruction by hunger and don’t know how to survive.  They don’t just cut down trees for firewood but also to sell them.  They cut the trees down any old way leaving a stump a metre and a half tall because they can’t be bothered to bend down far enough…  And Bulgarians collude with them massively, buying from them to save the odd lev or two rather than going to companies that operate legally.”

“It’s everyone’s fault,” he notes, adding that even if we’re not in on the ‘game’, not doing anything to stop it makes us jointly responsible for what’s happening.  Remembering earlier rumours of monthly bribes paid by the bosses of the six state forestry associations to a high-ranking government official so that they could carry out illegal logging, the mathematician adds:

“Things got quite heated for a day or two but the rumours were neither confirmed nor refuted very convincingly at all.  And the corruption continues.  Local mayors, municipal councils, the police, logging companies – they’re all part of a ‘logging Mafia’, they’re like a monster that’s got its fingers all over our forests and is destroying them.  People are getting desperate.  Some have told me that they’ll take matters into their own hands and deal with this mob.  I hope things don’t go that far because blood will be spilt.  I hope this isn’t our last chance to stop these crimes.”

Given that authorities responsible for protecting the forests are either unwilling or unable to do their job and identify the legal and illegal loggers, stopping the illegal ones, the professor suggests a radical solution:

“There either has to be a moratorium on all logging in beech forests or, at the very least, on the use of axes, because Bulgaria’s water supply depends on the forests,” he insists. “Logging destroys our water reserves.”

The mathematician is angry that Bulgarian politicians are currently so concerned with their own career paths that they allow crimes committed in Bulgarian forests to go unpunished.  “Politicians come and go, but after them there won’t be any forests left,” he says indignantly.  And he hopes that we, “aren’t so ‘clever’” as he puts it, “that we become the last generation to see proper Bulgarian forests.”

Mihail Konstantinov and a group of his supporters have already written three letters to the authorities about logging work which they consider illegal.  One of the letters triggered an investigation.

“The best thing is that these crimes can’t be hidden,” the mathematician says.  “Tree stumps can’t be moved or buried, the gap they leave behind remains, and is visible.  Our experts will be joining the investigation committee, because experience has taught me not to believe what the authorities say.”

The professor’s demands go even further:  he also wants a moratorium on timber exports.  “The last winter was quite mild so the stores are overflowing with firewood.  But not all winters will be like that.”  At the moment, the only logging is for the export market, and it needs to be stopped.

“Right now, vast quantities of illegally felled timber is being exported across Bulgaria’s land borders and from the ports,” he claims. “Exports have to be stopped completely, and we’ll see what people who cut down these centuries-old trees do with them then.”

The strange thing is that when you talk to the authorities about Bulgarian forests being felled, they come up with statistics on the sustainable development of our woodland resources.  According to Lyubcho Trichkov, who’s an engineer and manager of the Directorate for Projects and International Activities, each year an additional fifteen hundred hectares of forests are created in Bulgaria.  Strictly speaking the figure is right, but no-one mentions that the increase over the past two decades is on meadows and agricultural land which have become overgrown with plants that have self-sown, rather than from the development of genuine forests.

“The numbers are right, but they’re being skewed,” comments Professor Konstantinov.  If you chop down a five-hundred-year old beech with a diameter of two to two point five metres and a tiny sapling appears in its place, that’s not increasing the woodland area, it’s a crude manipulation.  For one thing, the roots of that type of centuries-old tree are as deep as a five-storey building is tall.  The roots are a vast filter which takes up water when it rains and slowly releases it in dry spells.  Cutting down these trees exposes us to two phenomena:  floods and drought.”

We’ve got two things in Bulgaria:  beautiful women and beautiful mountains.  We’re in the process of losing the latter, says the Professor, a famous Bohemian, as we part.

English:  Christopher Pavis