European Green Party (EGP) MEPs have sent 17 questions to the European Commission (EC) about the Bulgarian Government’s omissions from the list of sites proposed for inclusion in the Natura 2000 ecological network, the Bulgarian Green Party (BGP) said in a media statement on March 1.

This act followed a BGP letter to the EGP, in which the Greens requested urgent co-operation about the decisions made by Bulgaria about Natura 2000.

The EGP questions are about the 17 zones left out of the Government list in its mid-February decision, the Bulgarian-language Bluelink.net said.

The head of the European directorate-general on the environment, Stavros Dimas, has six weeks in which to say how the EC will guarantee fulfilment of Bulgaria’s obligations in connection with the Habitats Directive and whether the EC will take punitive steps against the country.

The Greens are hoping that their questions will sharpen attention to the Natura 2000 issue in Bulgaria and contribute to the protection of the 17 zones. The party is insisting that the Bulgarian Government immediately take the required urgent measures to ensure preventative protection of the proposed zones pending their inclusion in Natura 2000. It also wants the people responsible for the decision to omit the zones to be identified and held accountable.

On March 1, the director of Bulgarian Science Academy (BSA) Ornithology Institute professor Dimitar Nankinov and Dr Stoyan Beshkov of the BSA National Museum of Natural Science said that they were baffled at the Cabinet’s decision to put off including the zones in Natura 2000, according to Bulgarian-language news website Mediapool.bg.

In a letter, they said that the omission of the zones would lead to the areas being annihilated or at very least, damaged. The two scientists also focused on the Government’s intention to conduct a new assessment of the zones that had been omitted. In Bulgaria there is a group of species known only to a small group of specialists who took part in the preparation of the Natura 2000 list. Nankinov and Beshkov said that this meant that it was not clear which other scientists could research the postponed zones.

The two scientists said that the time allowed for preparation of the “objective” assessments (up to October 2007) was insufficient.

Previous work on the issue took several years. They asked, if there is a real alternative proposal, who would arbitrate its merits.

“We think that conducting ‘alternative’ research under pressure from investors and local authorities and in unprofessionally short terms will result only in invalid results and, as a result, in ‘scientifically justified’ annihilation or harm of some of the unique sites in Bulgarian and European nature,” the letter said.