ENVIRONMENT-SLOVAKIA: More Devastation Looms After the Storm

By Pavol Stracansky Reprint | | Print |

Pavol Stracansky

BRATISLAVA, Dec 1 2004 (IPS) - Environmentalists have attacked the government over plans for redevelopment of the country’s largest national park after one of the biggest ecological catastrophes in the area in the last hundred years.

Storms earlier this month devastated much of the forests in the High Tatras national park. The equivalent of half the wood felled annually in Slovakia was blown down in the space of a few hours.

The government has said it will take two years to clear the trees that fell, and has applied to the European Union for money for the renewal of the forests.

But while the cost of the damage to the region and the national park’s ecology is still being counted, environmentalists claim the government is ignoring warnings that more problems will arise if nature is not left to regenerate the forest. They say the government is using the catastrophe to turn parts of the park’s so far protected land over to developers.

"The real ecological catastrophe will come now if the Tatras are regenerated according to the government’s plans," Juraj Lukac of the environmental group Vlk (Wolf) told IPS. "It would mean a definitive end to Europe’s smallest Alpine range."

The High Tatras mountain range – part of the Carpathian mountain range that stretches 1,500 km from western Slovakia to Romania – is home to a variety of rare flora and fauna.

The range is a national park and has been divided into different zones with varying levels of protected status dictating how much and what development can be undertaken in what areas, if at all.

But businessmen, economists and some politicians have argued in recent years that the potential of High Tatras as a year-round tourist destination is nowhere near being met. They want development of the region to provide more and better tourist services and resorts.

Environment Minister Laszlo Miklos has suggested that parts of the national park where no human activity was allowed could see their protection reduced.. "It’s pointless to keep maximum levels of protection enforced in areas where now there is no forest left," Miklos told the daily Sme.

Environmental groups say this move would pave the way for development in those areas.

A government committee has been set up to decide on development of the Tatras. The 12-man committee comprises 10 ministers or other politicians and two regional authority representatives.

There are no representatives of environmental groups and they say they do not expect to be consulted by the government on future plans for the region.

"It’s highly unlikely the third sector (civil society groups) will be consulted," Lukac told IPS. "The greatest risk to the Tatras is the activities of the government which through its committee for the regeneration of the Tatras want, without any kind of public discussion, to change the character of the national park and give big financial groups the chance to invest in new hotels, ski runs and golf courses."

Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda told Slovak media that the committee planned to regenerate the forests in such a way that "the catastrophe can be used for a new vision for the expansion of tourism in the High Tatras."

Environmentalists also point to the fact that human interference with nature contributed in large measure to the extent of the damage in the recent catastrophe.

The forest areas that were destroyed in the storms were almost exclusively spruce forests. Environmentalists and the government agree that one of the main reasons the damage was so great was that the forests were a spruce mono-culture planted for aesthetic reasons in the last century, replacing what was originally a mix of tree types. Spruce trees have shallow roots and are more easily felled by high winds.

Ministers have suggested replanting forests in some of the damaged areas. But environmentalists say that leaving the forests untouched and leaving nature to take care of their regeneration is more ecologically sound. Any other approach could have damaging consequences, they say.

"What happened in the High Tatras is the result of man’s activities when more than a century ago a spruce monoculture was planted using non-native varieties," head of the Tatras National Park administration Tomas Vancura told Slovak media. "None of us can better regenerate a forest than nature itself."

Government officials and tourist industry members have sought to allay fears over the future of the Tatras.

"The idea that hotels and ski runs will cover the areas of devastated forest is absurd," environment minister Milkos told Slovak media. "I have no idea why everyone thinks that business people, hotel managers and travel agents for instance, want to hurt the Tatras."