The seventh year of the new century was quite hectic for environmentalists in Bulgaria, as many new regulations came into effect since Bulgaria joined the European Union in the beginning of 2007, and correspondingly many more violations on environmental protection orders were registered throughout the country.

The three main campaigns that environmentalists fought about were the Natura 2000 European network of protected zones’ envelopment and implementation procedures, the removal of the protected area status of Strandja Nature Park and the start of winter sport facilities construction in many Bulgarian mountains, Rila Mountain being the most talked-about site in the country.

Local and foreign environmental groups organised many other events connected to other components of sustainable living in Bulgaria throughout 2007.

For first time, European Mobility Week (September 16-22) was officially celebrated in Bulgaria, opened by Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, European Integration Minister Gergana Grancharova, Dutch ambassador Willem van Ee and business representatives. Calling for more healthy and clean transport modes in the city, the Dutch delivery company TNT gave all of the officials bicycles. It also started providing its employees with bikes, free-of-charge.

The Global Day of Action on Climate Change was celebrated in Bulgaria on December 6 with a well-attended cinema projection and debate in Sofia’s Red House Centre for Culture and Debate.

In the beginning of 2007, the civil group For Natura 2000 was officially formed. Every Thursday morning its activists would meet in front of the Cabinet building to “welcome” the ministers with their requests before the start of official weekly sessions. The environmentalists were very creative throughout 2007, coming up with ideas for different-themed actions every week to attract the attention of ministers and media.

The main requests of the environmentalists were the approval of all or most of the protected zones within the EU’s Habitat and Birds Directives, a construction ban on virgin areas of Iralki beach along the Black Sea coast and a ban on Kaliakra-area golf course developments and wind turbines construction, as the site falls into Via Pontica birds migration route.

The Bulgarian Government was supposed to submit to the EU the full list of protected zones approved by the Cabinet as listed in Natura 2000 by January 1 2007. However, it failed to do so because the voting procedure on the zones’ inclusion was postponed several times.

The Cabinet took its summer leave and the full envelopment of the protected areas was voted on in the autumn; only Rila Buffer Zone was not approved because the construction of the super-costly Super Borovets project had started there.

The activists also pointed out Item 3 from the Natura 2000 resolution, proposed by Regional Development and Public Works Minister Assen Gagaouzov and approved by the Government. It enabled all areas within the Natura 2000 network that already had regional development plans before Natura 2000 came into force to be permitted for development and construction. The environmentalists said that Bulgaria was the only EU country where such a contradiction was approved by the authorities. In the rest of Europe, not all proposed areas were included in the relevant Natura 2000 zones but such regional development plans were not taken into account for territories in the protected zones network.

Furthermore, on June 29 the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) decided to erase the Balkan Peninsula’s biggest protected area Strandja Nature Park, located in the south-easternmost part of Bulgaria and bordering the Black Sea and Turkey.

Groups of people started spontaneously gathering to express their utter disagreement with this. They started intentionally and regularly blocking main Sofia thoroughfares in the busiest hours over a period of a few weeks. Protests were also held in Strandja and the cities of Varna, Bourgas, Yambol, Stara Zagora and Plovdiv. About 30 people were arrested during the protests in Sofia.

The SAC’s decision was based on the fact that when Strandja was declared a protected area, it was not done by the then-Environment minister but by his deputy, as the minister was not available. Actually, the real reason behind this attempt was increased investors’ intentions for this quite well-preserved Bulgarian natural site. A hotel development had started on the Black Sea coast in Strandja in 2006 and was suspended by the authorities due to lack of necessary documentation. However, apparently the investor pushed quite hard and the mayor Tsarevo, who is in charge of the area, started appealing against the nature park’s protected area status.

After strong protest against this, demonstrations and streets blockages, in the beginning of July the Supreme Administrative Prosecutor’s Office started taking steps towards reversing the SAC’s decision on Strandja.

Following, Parliament gathered and quickly voted on new amendments to the Bulgarian Protected Areas Act. According to them, no protected area status can be appealed against in court for such zones declared as protected before the year of 2007. The voting returned  Strandja Nature Park to protected area status. However, it did not do so with the previously removed protected-area status of the Black Sea zone Kamchiiski Pyasutsi, which was also attacked by strong investor interests.

The local environmentalists started fighting on another field as well. The campaign Rila Ni E Mila (Rila Is Dear to Us) was started in late summer 2007 because a lift and road construction started in Rila Mountains, not far from Seven Rila Lakes. The area is also part of Natura 2000, together with the buffer zone around it.

Rila National Park is one of the nine European protected areas certified by PAN Parks, the management quality certification system for protected areas, and one of the three national parks in Bulgaria, IUCN category II. Bulgarian NGOs and representatives of Rila National Park management and the business welcomed the Pan Parks certificate, awarded in October 2007. However, this did not stop the Government from excluding Rila Buffer Zone from the Natura 2000 list while voting on the last zones to be included in it in November 2007.

A few days before the well-deserved Christmas holidays, on December 12 an exhibition of work by architect Norman Foster was opened in Sofia. His PR in Bulgaria had a purpose. It turned out he had in the pipes a Black Sea coastal development project in the still-virgin Karadere beach near the town of Byala. It seemed that the Bulgarian investor who had eyed Karadere sponsored Foster’s Bulgaria visit.

The plan created by the firm Foster + Partners included construction of a car-free village in the woods bordering Karadere beach. However, the village would cut into large part of the forests, chasing out the indigenous wild boar population and covering the hills with concrete or stone, as visualised from the 3D model on Foster + Partner’s website. The non-use of cars is also under serious question as it is very doubtful that the materials for the village would arrive via helicopters and not on some newly constructed roads. There are no roads from the nearest village of Goritsa to the beach and the visitors usually take the off-road to nearby the salty water before spreading their tents on the shore.