Brussels, 04/08/2011 (Agence Europe) - The WWF has sent out an SOS. According to the environmental protection organisation, the Carpathians, the last forest outside of Russia and Finland that is still intact in Europe, is under threat by a Romanian road building project. This project would seriously undermine EU legislative provisions on environmental protection (Habitats directive). The NGO considers that it would also be appropriate if the European Commission examined this case.
Permission to build has been granted by the Romanian Environmental Protection Agency for a controversial national highway project, the 661. This would go through the most remarkable protected areas in Romania, the Retezat mountains and the Domogled national park. The WWF considers that this is a clear breach of European legislation, given that the Romanian authorities have ignored the fact that the road goes through an area that is a protected area and that the environmental impact study (considered to be under par) did not mention the devastating effects of the project.
In a press release on 28 July, Magor Csibi, director of the WWF “Danube Carpathians” programme in Romania explained that, “it is absolutely necessary for us to protect our priceless natural resources. In this case we are talking about the protection of 100,000 ha of forest in which the human footprint has been sufficiently light enough to protect the landscape in its almost original state. The construction of this road is in utter contempt of the protected areas in Romania. The Commission has already investigated on several occasions breaches of legislation involving environmental protection. Once again, this is another sad case that requires examination”. Demonstrations organised by the Agent Green NGO over the past two years to protest against this project culminated in a demonstration in front of the Romanian Ministry for the environment and forests at the beginning of July. In March, the NGO revealed that the company in charge of carrying out the environmental impact study had committed fraud. Since then, another environmental impact study has been carried out by university experts. It revealed that the biodiversity in the protected area was much greater than had initially been described and that the third trunk road of the highway would have devastating effects on 2552 ha of this border area forest. Agent Green, supported by the WWF and other NGOs, intends to take the Romanian government to court and lodge a complaint to the European Commissions. (A.N.trans/fl)