A web of roads and unlawful salvage felling in the Telciu forest district

Plunder in Rodna Mountains National Park #3

Bucharest, 26 February 2024 – The forests of the Telciu Forest District in Rodna Mountains National Park are being devoured by a web of roads and illegal salvage felling on extremely steep slopes. Forestry operations here compromise the terrain, tourism, biodiversity, pastoralism and even forestry itself.

Today Agent Green publishes the third episode of the “Plunder in Rodna Mountains National Park” series, through which Agent Green points out that the Romanian government has not met its governing commitment to strictly protect the forest in the 13 national parks, whose combined area represents just 1% of the country’s territory. The first episode presented abusive logging in the Someș-Țibleș forest district. The second episode exposed the chaos in the Romanian police that facilitates tree theft. The next two episodes will present the Forest Guard’s catastrophic performance and the international corporation that exploits Rodna’s timber commercially.

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Agent Green investigators went through Rodna’s forests in the Telciu forest district plot by plot. Their discoveries are extremely serious and worrying.

“Nowhere in Romania have I seen so many forest roads so close together. Even rocks were broken up to create access to the very last tree. A web of roads has been created. Some eroded so deeply and so quickly that another was built parallel to the original. Every road piercing the forest means cleared trees. Nothing will ever grow there again because the erosion is so severe. They even cut on slopes of 42 degrees,” said Dan Cătălin Turiga, Agent Green forestry engineer.

Logging operations violate European and national legislation. The expired forest management plan for the Telciu Forest District has no appropriate assessment study, and logging is justified by natural disasters, meaning salvage felling. The only approved operations are some very low-intensity conservation cuts.

“The only accidents at Telciu are stupidity and theft. Nothing is being conserved. Everything is being destroyed. There was no windthrow. There are hardly any dead trees either. It is mainly green trees that are cut for profit. What we are discussing here is a method of theft, the salvage-felling method. Slopes are being destabilised and the disasters will only follow afterwards. It will be too late for biodiversity and for forestry. A real disaster is unfolding,” accuses Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green.

Confronted with the facts, Mr Luca Pupeză, head of the district covering 17,573 ha, sees no problem other than being filmed. Local residents interviewed in this new episode allege that a mafia involving the forest district and the town hall has taken hold.

Turiga also points out that: “The forest district has mixed plots of younger forests with plots of mature forests, as well as denser forests with sparser ones. This resulted in a larger, non-uniform plot on which they apply the same forestry operations. All to increase the logging quota, although such practices are illegal under forestry regulations.”

Chitul Traian, the forest estate engineer, knows of no irregularities but admits that there are plots with an average slope above 35°, exceeding the maximum legal slope gradient on which trees may lawfully be cut.

While in the field, Agent Green investigators met Mr Ioan Bâca, professor of tourism geography at Babes Bolyai University. He criticises “the appearance of a very large number of new forest and pastoral roads in national parks. These roads cause severe erosion, and the degraded areas will no longer be usable by tourists, foresters or shepherds. So they will move to another plot, another route, and so on. This phenomenon degrades the mountain terrain. Without a foundation, biodiversity cannot be maintained either. There are few dead trees and no windthrown trees. The logging is not justified.”