Products also in Germany: Timber mafia rages in Romania’s last jungle

Products also in Germany
Timber mafia rages in Romania’s last jungle

By Tom Kollmar
November 4, 2023, 8:57 a.m

Forests around the world are in danger, also because one in three trees is cut down illegally. Criminal organizations are also causing immense damage in Europe – and are not afraid of violence. But the phenomenon of environmental crime is not easy to tackle.

The traces of the crime lie in the undergrowth, left and right of the trail. Everywhere in the forest area south of the Romanian city of Brasov there are tree stumps whose trunks were illegally cut down. Some of them are already weathered, some of them look as if criminals have only recently attacked the trees.

Valeriu-Norocel Nicolescu, professor of forestry at the University of Brasov, knows exactly which trees were cut legally and which were cut illegally. He has been coming to this forest for years. Nicolescu points to a collection of stumps. “These were illegally logged,” he says. A little later the same picture. Also a weathered stump between two conifers: cut down without permission.

The problem has now been brought under control here. And yet: “Reforestation requires a lot of time and money and is a lot of effort,” says Nicolescu. Illegal timber extraction has an impact on the local areas and the forest and on a “large scale”. Illegal deforestation is taking place on a large scale all over the world and in Europe. Here on the continent, according to environmental protection associations, especially in Romania.

Dangerous resistance

Those who stand in the way call it mafia. Also Catalina Radulescu. She is part of the Agent Green organization. The environmentalists travel deep into the forests and document deforestation – illegal, as they say. In numerous videos that the organization uploads to YouTube, you can see how they confront the alleged perpetrators on site.

That’s really dangerous, says Radulescu. “People have already died.” What she means: As early as 2019, the umbrella organization of the Romanian forest workers’ unions (Consilva) reported that six foresters had been murdered in recent years. In over 600 cases, forestry employees are said to have been attacked during their work.

Many Agent Green activists do not appear in public. Out of fear, as Radulescu says. Why are the lawyer and her fellow activists doing all this to themselves? “If we don’t do it, the entire forest will disappear. And our quality of life will no longer be the same,” she is certain. Radulescu doubts that people in Romania are really aware of the consequences. “There will be massive changes,” she warns. “While we’re still alive.”

A worthwhile business

In the forest area around Brasov, the forestry workers take out a folder and leaf through the evidence photos wrapped in cling film. They are 15-year-old photographs of the slopes on which they stand. The images show the consequences of illegal deforestation. Where the trees are now close together again, 15 years ago there was a fallow area, desolate and colorless.

The recordings look like the images that environmentalists publish every year from the jungles of the Amazon. And even though, according to the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), over 90 percent of forest loss occurs in tropical forests, it also occurs here. The last virgin forest in Europe is dying in Romania, say activists. And that is also due to unauthorized deforestation. According to the European Union, up to 30 percent of the world’s timber is harvested illegally. The annual value: six billion euros. Criminals make great money from clearing forests.

It is unclear how high the proportion of illegal logging is in Romania. In a press conference, the Environment Ministry initially said that around 50 percent of the felled wood was felled illegally. But according to ntv information, the ministry is now rowing back. No figures can be given at the moment, an inventory is currently underway. Both the Environment Ministry and law enforcement authorities declined an interview request.

Complex countermeasures

“We finally have to take wood theft seriously as part of organized crime,” warns Jan-Niclas Gesenhues. He traveled to the Romanian forest with his Green party colleague Lukas Benner. The members of the Bundestag want to combat the machinations of the timber mafia more strongly – at the German and European level. According to Gesenhues, some wood is used as a table or cupboard in German living rooms. “No one can want that,” he says.

According to environmental organizations, there are different ways in which illegally felled wood appears to be legal – and it can also end up in hardware stores or furniture stores. In some cases, permits for deforestation are used multiple times. Illegally felled wood is often processed and relabeled in sawmills. In retrospect, it is difficult to understand which boards that leave the sawmills come from regularly felled wood and which from irregular wood.

Gesenhues also speaks of “mafia structures”. Mafia structures that, according to party colleague Benner, are being fought with far too little power among the law enforcement authorities, including in Germany. That needs to be adjusted. “For crimes in the area of ​​environmental crime, for example, no telecommunications surveillance may be carried out,” says Benner, describing the situation. This sector of organized crime must be combated as such and punished “not like illegal parking”.

Wood is not cocaine

According to a report by the European Union, environmental crime is the third largest criminal activity in the world. Before that there is only drug trafficking and product piracy. In addition to illegal logging, this also includes, for example, the improper disposal of waste and illegal fishing. Environmental crime causes losses of up to $281 billion annually – and the trend is rising. Benner says: “Environmental crime is not the refrigerator that was dumped somewhere on the edge of the forest.” However, in many places there is a lack of ambitious law enforcement and the corresponding human and financial resources.

The EU wants to combat crimes such as illegal deforestation more aggressively. The fact is: environmental crime is complex and combines many aspects – from environmental pollution to corruption. It is difficult to detect, often takes place in secret and is therefore difficult to punish. For example, while smuggling drugs is always and clearly criminal, the timber mafia must first be proven that the felled wood was cut illegally. A ton of cocaine in a container in the port of Hamburg is clearly a crime – a ton of shelves in the container next door is not.

Different measures and the interaction of various law enforcement agencies are needed to ensure that illegally felled wood no longer ends up in our living rooms in the future. And creative approaches: In Romania there is now an app that citizens can use to report suspicious timber shipments directly to the authorities.