Valdemar Stroe Ren (Danish School of Media and Journalism)
Green Gold
Bronze
International Picture Story
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.
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A small wood factory in the village Moldovita. The village is located in the northern part of Romania close to the forest. There are about 5000 inhabitants, and almost everyone is somehow involved in the logging industry, whether they want to or not.
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Illie Bucsa lives in Moldovita with his brother Dumitru. In the early spring of 2019, they told the authorities in Bucharest about illegal logging in their community. The local mafia found out about it, and on the 27th of May ten guys ambushed Illie and Dumitru, and beat them up in a forest close to their home.
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Dumitri is showing a picture of Illie, that was taken a few hours after they got beat up. Both of them had severe concussions, broken ribs and lots of wounds around their body. The two brothers are far from the only ones who have been assaulted by the mafia.
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In the mountains around the town of Borsa in Northern Romania, you’ll see several examples of illegal ‘clear cuts’. Large areas of forest, that has been completely removed. This is a huge problem for the nearby wildlife, and it also contributes to more floods and mudslides, since the trees hold the water in the earth.
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The mother, wife and colleagues of Liviu Pop are walking slowly behind his coffin during his funeral-parade -minutes before they say their final goodbyes. Liviu Pop was only 30 years old, and he leaves a wife and three girls behind him. Over 300 people attended his funeral.
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Bloodstains from the crime scene near the village of Rogoz. On the 16th of October the local forest ranger, Liviu Pop, was killed by three men in the woods. He had received a call about illegal logging and went out to see it for himself. When he arrived three men assaulted him, drove on him with a horse carriage and then shot him three times with his own weapon.
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Tiberiu Subatar is a forrmer owner of an illegal wooden factory in Moldovita. Four years ago he decided to quit his business, and instead fight against the illegal logging. He bought an apartment downtown only to put up cameras outside, so he could monitor every single truck driving in and out of Moldovita. He made it a full-time job to fight logging and corruption, and he checks his surveillance on a daily basis to see if there has been any illegal transports to report about.
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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.