Alexander Dunchev reported another small success in the big battle for the Bulgarian forest.
„Yesterday, on our signal with businessman Zhelyu Ganchev and after an inspection of the Forestry Agency, a fake sanitary logging was stopped /awaiting the revocation of the permit, as in the case of the two illegal logging of 600 acres in Samokov 10 days ago/ of over 5000 m3 in an illegal legal logging of 300 acres in 868-d. With this, at least this healthy beech forest above the village of Ogoya in the State Forest Service -Svoge,“, he said on Facebook.
Dunchev also explains how it is „illegally legal“: „The State Forest Service-Svoge has allowed 60% sanitary logging with the signatures of directors and foresters. This is „illegally“ because the 60% sanitary logging /that is, logging of 60% of all trees in the forest/ is allowed in a healthy forest /with individual broken branches and trees/, and separately the company is left to make „temporary“ forest highways, destroying the Ogoyska River with a bulldozer /a report was submitted to the Regional Inspectorate of Environmental Protection/ and logging illegally outside the permitted. And how did we know it was illegal? Easy – it turned out that the company „Viksan Paradise“ Ltd. was so secure in the state forest umbrella that its licensed forester Bisser Zankov with his own mark No. 8144 marked the illegally felled beeches in the forest, in an attempt to imitate the real forest mark of the state forester, which, however, is No. 8464.“
In his publication, Dunchev also pointed out how he was sure that the State Forest Service-Svoge and the North-Western State Enterprise (NWSE) had drawn an umbrella over the company regarding the illegal logging of thousands of cubic meters of beech forests:
- The illegal logging in the area has been going on for years (see satellite photo of illegal logging in the same forest, probably by the same company that had a logging site there in 2020), and instead of stopping it the State Forest Service-Svoge allows the company to continue with the illegal logging.
- About the illegal logging above the village of Ogoya, alerts were also sent to the NWSE (including 2022), separately a similar scheme was detected in the neighborhood of this forest, and in the spring we caught one with Atanas Rusev in the beech forest above the village of Ogoya. Svidnya (driven to „Svilotsel“ JSC), but to no avail – illegal logging continues!
- The illegal logging was easily concealed by the company with private mark No. 8144 with the full knowledge of the State Forest Service-Svoge, which marked only 5% instead of 60% of the trees in the forest.
- Only 30 minutes after our inspection the State Forest Service-Svoge tried to legalize with a new technical plan the illegal roads of the company in the forest.
- The owner of the company A. Ivanov tried to prevent our inspection with the question „What are you doing in my clearing?“ – apparently the State Forest Service-Svoge has given him full powers to cut down the forests above his house in the village of Ogoya.
- Instead of confiscating all the illegal timber from the illegal logging in 868-d, yesterday evening at 20:30 the State Forest Service-Svoge let the illegal timber leave in a truck with registration No. RA4889KS with a transport ticket for 31 m2 to the cellulose factory of „Svilotsel“ JSC in Svishtov.
The question remains whether the umbrella does not extend to the level of the Ministry, Dunchev asked. According to him, it will soon be clear and only because of these violations all directors below the level of minister should be fired.
„This is just the tip of an iceberg-scheme for millions of leva, for which we will hold Caretaker Minister of Agriculture Yavor Gechev personally responsible through the instruments of parliamentary control. This is our strategy to deal with illegal logging, forest abuse and the shortage of firewood in the current parliamentary crisis. These problems do not require legislative changes, but only the political will of the ministers responsible for forests and, above all, the removal of the political umbrella over corrupt forestry cadres and the timber mafia. So, there is a chance!„, Dunchev believes.
