“People have a misconception that illegal deforestation happens when sneaky wood thieves go and cut down trees. No. Illegal deforestation in most cases happens in the gray zone. As a matter of fact, the problem isn’t illegal logging, but logging that is disguised as legal when it clearly is not. Besides the fact that illegal deforestation destroys our environment, it is also making people’s lives miserable, and there is no question about this. It is time to form a separate authority that would monitor the ways and amount of forest exploitation in Romania. Change is now the duty of the politicians. There have been many attempts to tighten the law, but due to the influence of different interest groups, the laws are so messy that that the robbery of forests continues to thrive,” pointed out Attila Szabó in an interview made for Székelyhon TV’s show “Viewpoint;” Szabó is the director of the documentary movie about Romania’s forest exploitation entitled Ivy Green Tales.
“Two-thirds of Europe’s virgin forest is in Romania, although the ancient woodlands exist only on paper today. According to official data, there were almost 400,000 hectares of woods that were cut illegally, which means 50 hectares per day. The total value of the damage amounts to billions of euros. But this is far less than the destruction caused by legal logging, and the amount of the legally cut wood is growing each year,” says civil activist Hans Hedrich at the beginning of the documentary describing the battle of the org Agent Green against illegal Romanian deforestation.
“The documentary was shot in 2015, but nothing has changed since then, so I am forced to continue the battle. The second part of the documentary Ivy Green Tales will be filmed soon,” director Attila Szabó added.
Ivy Green Tales won the main prize at the Lakiteteleki Filmszemle/Film Festival of Lakitelek in Hungary in 2017.
Featured photo: Székelyhon.ro
