A group of environmental activists that have been campaigning for months about the Natura 2000 issue is now fighting on two fronts because of the Strandzha nature reserve controversy.

The Natura 2000 issue is about pressure on the Government to submit to the European Commission what environmentalists see as a complete list of sites in Bulgaria to be included in the Natura 2000 European ecological conservation network. The Strandzha issue arose after a Bulgaria court withdrew the Strandzha area’s nature conservation area status on technical grounds, saying that its 1995 declaration was procedurally incorrect. Developers are allegedly taking the chance to build in the hitherto environmentally pristine area.

Environmentalist group For Natura 2000 has for several weeks held protests outside the Cabinet office to coincide with ministers’ weekly meetings. On July 5, there was a variation on a theme as the group held their protest in support of the restoration of Strandzha’s status as a nature reserve.

The group expressed support for other activists who had turned out over the Strandzha issue, and also had praise for judge Julia Kovacheva, the only member of the Supreme Administrative Court bench to dissent from the ruling withdrawing Strandzha’s nature reserve status.

Strandzha is not only a part of the Natura 2000 network, but also makes up one per cent of Bulgaria’s territory, and is the biggest protected area in the country with the largest-scale and most interesting biodiversity. It accommodates species from before the ice age, dating back hundreds of thousands of years, the pro-Natura 2000 activists said. Strandzha national park is part of Europe’s natural and cultural heritage, and is one of the nine most valuable natural zones of Europe.

The environmentalists said that the Natura 2000 and Strandzha protests both involved ordinary people concerned about what was happening, and were not led by formal or professional ecological organisations. Only a few of the people taking part in the protests are professional ecologists.

Meanwhile, on July 9 international environmental watchdog WWF and six Bulgarian organisations lodged a complaint to the European Commission (EC) about the Bulgarian Government’s failure to submit a complete Natura 2000 list, and even having missed the deadline when it submitted the list that it did. A WWF media statement said the complaint justified the EC starting steps to impose sanctions on the Bulgarian Government.
 More on Strandzha: see page 9.