The American journal uses the headline “Europe is sacrificing its centuries-old forests for energy” to illustrate how incorrect it is to designate burned wood as “green energy.”

To investigate the illegal exports of fire pellets, The New York Times dispatched a team to the Cheile Bicazului, a northeastern region in Romania, “in one of the oldest forests on the continent.” The company Ameco from Harghita county of Romania, which the American journal claims have documentation of the fact that it feeds its grinders from the protected forests of Romania.

The forests of Romania, which make up two-thirds of the EU’s virgin forests, were hiked through over four days by a reporter and a photographer. They observed clearcutting there and followed trucks from woods with delicate ecosystems. Romania’s environmental ministry did not respond to the NY Times journalist’s questions about these shipments, the proposed law change and the pellet industry in general.

Meantime, after the NY Times article was published, the Romanian Minister of the Environment accused The New York Times publication of fake news.

The Romanian Minister of the Environment states the alleged journalistic investigation of an environmental crime. This says that the loss of forest cover in the Cheile Bicazului-Hasmas National Park area in Romania is due to an extreme meteorological phenomenon, a storm, which affected the forests all over Romania, which only in the Cheile Bicazului, 87,000 cubic meters of trees were blown down by the wind, on approximately 1,200 hectares of forest.

We find it bizarre that the authors of this article completely excluded such accessible (but essential) information. Moreover, the questions that were sent to our Communications Department on September 5, near the end of the working day, did not address this specific case but only presented a general approach to the subject.

Romanian Ministry of the Environment

According to statistics from the Environmental Investigation Agency, most of Romania’s most extensive pellet plans have been supplied with whole logs from forests under protection. According to their estimation, nearly a third of the wood supplies to these enterprises came from protected regions.

Once you cut down these old trees, you degrade ecosystems that took centuries to form with little human intervention.

Dan-Catalin Turiga, a forest engineer who accompanied Times reporters

In Europe’s protected forests, logging is not prohibited, but governments must carry out environmental assessments to guarantee the area is being preserved. However, specialists claim that these analyses are uncommon. Last year, the European Court of Auditors raised the alarm on these supposedly protected forests, finding many of them in “bad or poor conservation status.”

The NY Times also outlines the pellet export routes from Romania, Poland, and Slovakia to various EU nations, particularly Italy, where burning wood is regarded as not affecting global warming because trees collect carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release it back into the atmosphere.

If the European Union no longer considers energy from burnt wood to be carbon-neutral, it would immediately throw many countries off track to hit renewable-energy targets. That would have major consequences for countries like Italy, the continent’s largest consumer of wood pellets. More than a third of its renewable energy comes from burning plant material. For years, the Italian government has offered tax deductions to encourage buying pellet stoves.

New York Times

The problem of illegal deforestation in Romania remains one of the most controversial topics. The government does nothing to combat illegal wood cutting. More and more foreign companies take wood from centuries-old Romanian forests and export it to various EU countries, Italy for pellets, Sweden for furniture, etc. Romania will wake up without forests, with a barren and lifeless wild environment. While other countries have untouched forests, Romania sacrifices its protected forests. For what? For UE’s ”green energy”? With the energy crisis at its highest point, this problem will get even worse.

The post NY Times: Romania’s Secular Forests Sacrificed for EU’s Green Energy appeared first on Valahia.News.

It is not the first time New York Times praises Romania as a marvelous destination to travel to. This time the journalists talk about the wild life and about the old growth European primary forests, out of which 65% are in Romania. In the same time, the post reminds its readers about the efforts for nature conservation, some of these efforts being undertake by Prince Charles of Great Britain.

As compared to other travel destinations from Romania, “Transylvanian Alps” are within reach, as the tourists can drive on Transfagarasan, once called by Jeremy Clarkson of BBC Top Gear “the best road in the world”.

Transylvanian Alps are something Romanians can be really proud of and which offer them an additional reason to praise their country.

The post New York Times: “Transylvanian Alps are among the top places to visit in 2020” appeared first on Valahia.News.

The author presents both the beauty of these magnificent places and the potential of the Romanian mineral water, but also the failure of the Romanian Governments, from the beginning of the 20th century onward in making these areas flourish.

Indeed, locals and foreigners, most of them from the neighboring Hungary, know about the healing power of the mineral springs from Transylvania; yet, these mountain resorts still have to get investments in order to accommodate more tourists and to offer them the best conditions to treat their conditions.

What is interesting is that the author of the article comes from a country whose capital city, Budapest, is famous all over the world for the thermal baths and SPAs with no less than 118 thermal springs and 15 public thermal baths, along with many other private ones. It means the author is deeply familiarized with the touristic potential of the mineral waters and thermal springs.

Indeed, the Romanian Government should do more for these promising mountain resorts which, after the fall of the communist regime, were too little taken care of and modernized.

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