CPOY

CPOY 75 International Picture Story Bronze: Green Gold

Romania is home to one of the largest virgin forests in Europe, but during the last 30 years, it has been abused fiercely. Ever since the fall of communism, large areas of land were given back to their rightful owners, who started cutting the trees to earn money after many years of poverty. The logging industry evolved, and since the late nineties and up until now, deforestation and illegal logging has been a huge problem in Romania. Today the mafia controls the industry, and they suppress anyone, who tries to fight against the illegal logging. The local communities in Northern Romania are affected by the conflict around the forest. People live in constant fear of what will happen if they don’t obey the mafia, and yet some activists and forest rangers still risks their lives in the fight for preserving the forest. 



Caption
Slide 8 of 8
October 19, 2019
A truck is driving down the mountainside close to the town of Borsa. The trucks have official papers on how much wood they are allowed to bring from the forest, but many of them do not comply with this. They either bring twice as much as allowed, or use the same paper twice to be able to cut more wood. According to Greenpeace, the Romanian state loses around 1.5 billion Euros a year to illegal logging.
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