"If by some miracle there were more forests left on Sinjajevina, in the pasture zone, it would be worth much more than it is today."
Thus, the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism (MORT) responded to the initiative of the Center for the Protection and Study of Birds (CZIP), with which that NGO requested to prevent the plan to plant 100 thousand trees on the pastures of Sinjajevina.
The answer is actually an excerpt from the Special Purpose Spatial Plan (PPPN) for the Durmitor area, and apart from the wish for a miracle, as CZIP told "Vijesta", that NGO did not receive a more specific explanation from the Department of Sustainable Development as to why it would or would not. the largest pasture in Europe should be reforested.
At the end of December last year, CZIP submitted an initiative to MORT and the Agency for Nature and Environmental Protection (EPA) requesting that further afforestation of Sinjajevina be stopped. The initiative followed a month after the Ministry of Defense (MoD) organized the planting of 3.000 spruce and pine saplings at the Savina voda location - where the formation of a training and shooting range is also planned. The department of Predrag Bošković then said that the plan is to plant 100 seedlings on that mountain in the coming period, and that the action was organized in cooperation with the Forestry Administration, the Ministry of Agriculture and the municipalities of Mojkovac and Kolašin.
Complaining about the plan to turn Sinjajevina's pastures into forests, several non-governmental organizations said at the time that the action was neither foreseen in the afforestation plan, nor was it justified from an ecological point of view. The Ministries of Defense and Agriculture, nor the Forestry Administration, never answered the questions of "Vijesta" about who and on what basis made the decision on afforestation of pastures.
Pastures are guarded by strategies and plans, but not by practice
Partially responding to the initiative of the CZIP, from which department of the resignation Pavle Radulović led by the prime minister Dusko Markovic, they cited a part from the PPPN for the Durmitor area. "If by some miracle there were more forests left on Sinjajevina in the pasture zone, it would be worth much more than it is today. Such richness of the flora of its pastures, without the necessary minimum of forests, is something that should worry us more than make us happy. Many karst mountains whose pastures became in the optimal area of coniferous forests, as is the case with the pastures of Sinjajevina, survived a century of their floristic richness and passed into soil and flora degradations. The pastures of Sinjajevina have not yet reached the stage of floristic decadence, but the time is not far when that stage will occur, first of all due to uneven and untidy exploitation, due to complete deforestation and finally due to increasing deforestation under the influence of erosive forces and biotic factors". This is the answer they sent to CZIP. From that NGO, they said that Savina voda, the location where the first planting campaign was organized, was not even included in that document. They again sent a letter to MORT, with a request that that department reconsider the justification of the afforestation action and stop further afforestation of the largest pasture in Europe. They also reminded that the afforestation of pastures as an option was not mentioned in the Study on the Protection and Establishment of Protected Natural Assets in the Sinjajevina area, nor in the Strategy with the Forest and Forestry Development Plan 2014 - 2023, Spatial Urban Plan of the Municipality of Šavnik, and the forested location in Sinjajevina is not mentioned not even in the Forest Management Plan for 2019. "The protection study states that systematic vegetation research was not done, but that in some works associations from targeted areas are mentioned... the question arises on the basis of which the conclusion was reached that Sinjajevina's pastures are entering the floristic phase decadence and that the reason for this is complete deforestation, as explained in the PPPN for the Durmitor area", is one of the questions of the CZIP.
Referring to the Forest Management Plan, they point out that Sava voda is not even on the list of defined forest management units, so they ask on what basis it was decided to reforest that particular location. They also remind that the Strategy with the Forest and Forestry Development Plan 2014 to 2023 calls for the protection of non-forest habitats, that document states that "further financing of afforestation and the expansion of forests is no longer expedient, except in those locations specified in the plan where the forest is necessary due to some of its general useful functions".
"We do not know if Sinjajevina is planned as a location for afforestation in some of the planning documents", it is stated in the repeated letter of the CZIP.
The same Strategy, as pointed out many times before from other initiatives for the protection of Sinjajevina, states that "Montenegro has a proportion of forests that is at the very top in Europe", and that "therefore, further afforestation of agricultural areas is not desirable", and that, among other things in order to preserve agricultural production, those areas should be preserved and their use encouraged. The idea of afforestation of pastures, as stated by the CZIP, is additionally challenged by the Protection Study, according to which agricultural production is one of the main economic activities of the Sinjajevina area, and for many households the only source of income. In the Study, they remind from the CZIP, it is also stated that the plant cover, above all grass, is "an important factor in the individual characteristics of Sinjajevina" and that "with a pasture area of 120.000 hectares, on which 200.000 sheep can be grazed, Sinjajevina is one of the real pastures - pastoral mountains". The CZIP reminds that in the PUP of the municipality of Šavnik, in addition to formal protection, it is proposed to "pay attention to the real protection and maintenance of pastures as a floristic category, and that through the protection and maintenance of katun and the livestock tradition of this region".
The inspection is silent, there are no answers based on the SPI
Because of the plan to turn Sinjajevina's pastures into forests and thus threaten the natural ecosystem on that mountain, the URA Civil Movement filed a criminal complaint against the Minister of Defense in December.
The MoD on Sinjajevina did not respond to the URA's request for access to information in accordance with the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly, nor to a later request in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information.
Due to the endangerment of the natural ecosystem in Sinjajevina, the Ozone Environmental Movement sent an initiative for inspection supervision to the Directorate for Inspection Affairs. They haven't received an answer yet. On September 5 of last year, the government gave the MoD permission for the temporary use of around 7.500 hectares of land for the purposes of establishing a training and shooting range. Two weeks later, at the Government session, the petition of the Citizens' Initiative "Save Sinjajevina" was rejected, which, in addition to declaring the mountain a protected area, requested that the plan for the formation of the training ground be suspended, that the mountain be left to herders, affirmed as a tourist destination, and that protection of cultural heritage, tradition and archaeological sites in Sinjajevina...
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