The exchange of forestlands should be banned by amending the Forests Act, the coalition To Sustain the Nature in Bulgaria (SNB) proposed during a news conference on April 10 in Sofia. SNB also wants a ban on re-zoning existing forest.
“The forestland swaps are a mechanism introduced to make forest fund management easier, but now it is used for acquisitions of woodland, which is then cleared and built up,” WWF Bulgaria spokesperson Konstantin Ivanov said. Companies that have received attractive land plots in Kaliakra on the Black Sea coast in exchange of terrains near Shoumen, started re-zoning the land for construction immediately after completing the swap, Vanya Rutarova from Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds said.
Land evaluated at 1500-2500 leva a hectare has been exchanged for similar plots on the Black Sea coast, which had market price of 2.5-3 million euro a hectare," Stefan Avramov from Biodiversity Foundation said. “The forests and land exchanges are not a market mechanism and have nothing to do with the market prices,” Avramov said.
Green Balkans representative Konstantin Dichev named several “most striking” cases of exchanges and arrangement deals with lands, which had been directly sold or given as a municipal contribution to projects of mixed private-public partnerships. One such case was the deal in which Svoge municipality sold “seven hectares of first-class beech forest for 1500-2000 leva a decare”. The two companies that bought it later exchanged it for 1500 decares sand in Kamchiiski Pyasutsi. It is Bulgaria’s biggest beach, but also a Natura 2000 zone, Dichev said. “[Agriculture Minister] Nihat Kabil gave them this gift,” he said.
Such land exchanges were done at a loss for the state and as a consequence, thousands of hectares of forestland have been cleared, which was threatening the lives of thousands Bulgarians, the environmentalists said. “A criminal army including not only companies, but also prosecutor’s offices, court, ministers and of course the police did this,” Dichev said. This was a violation of all possible European Union and Bulgarian laws, “we looked for one that has not been violated but we could not find even a single one”, Dichev further claimed.
Rutarova pointed out several other land swaps cases in the area of the northern Black Sea coast, which were Natura 2000 zones announced according to EU Birds Directive, as the important Via Pontika birds’ migration route passes there.
WWF representative Zhivko Bogdanov spoke about a case of exchanging woods in Staro Oryahovo near the Black Sea village Shkorpilovtsi. Those forests have been certified by the international Forests Stewardship Council standard for sustainable forests management. Now they are threatened to lose the certificate as most probably would be used in an unsustainable way to develop massive tourism facilities in this area, Bogdanov said.
In conclusion, SNB said it started a petition against the land exchanges, which will be submitted to the European Commission Directorate-General Justice. SNB said its members sent personal letters to all Bulgarian members of Parliament asking them to stop the exchanges. The coalition said it would go on with the information campaign and protest outside Parliament until the land exchanges are stopped.
