The 2008/09 ski season in Bulgaria has only just started, and already, 30 non-governmental organisation and citizen groups, acting under the coalition heading To Save the Nature in Bulgaria, have sent out an alert naming illegal ski runs and equipment. The announcement was sent to the media on November 26 2008, asking skiers and snowboarders to avoid using the illegal sites.

Such use would otherwise "directly help to finance and develop the law-contradicting projects in protected [natural] territories of Bulgaria".

The To Save the Nature press release lists the following as to be avoided:
- All the slopes in the Bansko ski zone in Pirin National Park, with the exception of The Old Piste (Starata pista);
- The lower part of Laleto in Vitosha Nature Park;
- The new upper part of the existing piste in the Bodrost/Kartala ski zone at Rila and the newly constructed cabin lift that services the run (the same one in which Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev was trapped in September 2008);
- The Moussalenska ski trail in Rila National Park and the new Borovets lift, Markoudjik 2; and
- The lift going from Pionerska Lodge to Rilski Ezera Lodge in Rila National Park and the three tracks in the forest by the lift.

These areas have been built on protected territory via the felling of trees; have been constructed and put into use without the necessary or in violation of recommendations in environmental impact assessments and assessment of conformability with Natura 2000; are serviced by equipment that, by construction or use, is in ascertained violation of acts; and/or are serviced by equipment that is constructed without the necessary or in violation of issued directives following an environmental impact assessment and  assessment of conformability with Natura 2000, To Save the Nature wrote.

The assessments of slopes and equipment are based on official data received from state institutions after the information had been requested.

Yet these areas that exist are not the end of illegal activity: the envisaged Aleko project in Vitosha Nature Park violates Natura 2000 regulations; the Super Perelik project foresees more than 200km of mountain slopes through the trees of the Zapadni (Western) Rhodope zone, part of the Natura 2000 environmental network.

Others include the Koulinoto and Super Dobrinishte projects in Pirin National Park, Panichishte-Ezerata-Kaboul (aka, super Panichishte) in Rila National Park and the Rila buffer zone, the Super Borovets project that encroaches on a Natura 2000 birds habitat, and the Iskorvete-Govedartsi-Malyovitsa project in Rila National Park and the Rila buffer zone. All these areas fall under Natura 2000 protective guidelines.

According to an Alpha Research study of societal opinion ordered by the WWF-Bulgaria from late summer 2009, 73.6 per cent of Bulgarians listed "the felling of trees and reduction of forested area" as the most serious problem facing the country's nature; 71.5 per cent were against the development of infrastructure and construction of hotels, ski slopes and sporting equipment in protected nature zones of the Rila, Pirin, Stara Planina, Vitosha and Rhodope mountains.