SAR: The future Forestry Code makes it difficult for journalistic investigations on illegal logging

The current draft law on the Forestry Code will make it more difficult for journalists and environmental organizations that document on the ground the illegal cutting of trees and other violations of the law in Romania's forests, states, in a press release, the Academic Society of Romania (SAR) , which officially requests the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Forests (MMAP) to remove the respective provisions from the draft normative act.

In the form subject to public consultation, the draft regulates access to the forest in two distinct articles: for recreational purposes, respectively for professional purposes (for forest management, control, economic activities and scientific research), listing, in a limited way, the categories of personnel who have access in the forest, without including journalists and environmental activists.

"This mode of regulation risks generating serious problems for journalists and environmental activists in relation to the people, foresters and companies whose activities in the forest they investigate, document, monitor and report, that it is about cutting trees, hunting, management of protected areas or the development of different projects, more or less legal. At the same time, the idea that journalists or members of non-governmental organizations could be in the forest only for recreational purposes, but not during professional activities, risks affecting their rights", claims former senator Mihai Goţiu (USR ), responsible for the development and promotion of environmental policies within SAR.

He shows that unrestricted access to the forest is an older demand of civil society in Romania and is in line with a trend already manifested in several European countries, to recognize this right, regardless of whether it is public or private forests.

"The draft of the New Forestry Code proposes such a provision, in article 58, which allows, for recreational purposes, access on foot (pedestrian) throughout the national forest fund, and by bicycle on forest roads and marked paths and trails. In the same article, half of the gift is taken back, by giving private forest owners the possibility to limit, in a discretionary way, recreational access, which is not difficult to anticipate will happen, especially in the case of forests where the legality cutting or hunting is violated. The poisoned apple is, however, article 59, which lists exhaustively and limiting the categories of personnel who have access to the forest for professional purposes", explains Mihai Goţiu, who has worked for more than two decades as an investigative journalist, including in the field of environment , and was the initiator of some anti-theft amendments to the Forestry Code, adopted in 2020, during the period in which he was a senator (2016-2020).

According to him, the regulation of access to the forest with differentiation according to purpose (recreational, respectively professional) will generate and escalate conflicts, encouraging forest managers, public and private, to try to prevent them from entering the forest (on the grounds that if they didn't come to relax, they have nothing to do there) or to sue journalists and activists in abusive SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) lawsuits.

Mihai Go'iu also shows that the idea that journalists and activists could legally be in the forest only "for recreational purposes", could create problems for them in case of accidents - not to mention physical aggression - like the loss of rights that depend on the recognition of the fact that, at the time of the accident, they were engaged in a gainful activity (compensations, insurance premiums, survivor's pensions, in extreme cases).

SAR will request, as part of the consultation procedure, the introduction of several changes and amendments to the draft of the New Forestry Code, among which are: the obligation to archive video monitoring for a period of more than 30 days and the establishment of contraventional, respectively criminal sanctions for non-compliance with this obligations; the elimination of the aberrant amendment by which the fauna and fish of the mountain rivers become the property of the owners of the forests and at the discretion of their managers; reintroducing as a crime the destruction, breaking, uprooting of trees in parks and green spaces in localities and the elimination of the provision that would allow the re-use of means of transport seized for illegal transport for the transport of wood, if the criminal case is not definitively resolved within 6 months .