The Montenegrin Society of Ecologists (CDE) announced today that the Municipality of Danilovgrad has started felling old trees in the "Rijeka Zeta" Nature Park, without the consent of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Yesterday, they say, an old elm tree was cut down, although it did not interfere with the reconstruction of the road. "It is disastrous that the institution that initiated the establishment of the nature park works to the detriment of the park and the local community. In addition to all that, the Municipality imposes the following attitude on the local community: 'either the road or the trees', where in fact there is space for both public goods," the CDE points out. .
The situation is worsened, as they said, by the fact that the officials of the Municipality announced at the last agreement meeting with the CDE that the trees will be handled in accordance with the guidelines prescribed by the Environmental Agency. "There are no guidelines yet, but the Municipality still removes the trees," added the company.
They remind that the Montenegrin Society of Ecologists more than a year ago initiated the first meeting with the representatives of the Municipality of Danilovgrad with the aim of finding a sustainable solution for the reconstruction of the road Spuž - Danilovgrad, via Martinić. They said that through a series of meetings during the past year, they tried to show the Municipality and other decision-makers and interested parties the importance of preserving the old trees along that road.
"The manager of the protected area should be the first in line to understand, respect and control the application of the law in his area, and in the case of the Municipality of Danilovgrad, we witness continuous attempts to avoid legal processes and procedures in order to please investors and contractors whose ventures in the protected area ignore nature, which at the same time is irreversibly destroyed," added the CDE.
They state that their initiative for the protection of trees in that area covered seven Skadar oaks, several elms and a natural oak tunnel of great environmental value, for which lower Martinići is recognized. After a year, as they said, a large part of the tunnel can be found cut down, and yesterday an elm tree was also cut down, while the consent from the Agency has still not been obtained.
CDE considers it obvious that there is no will of the Municipality to solve this problem, that is, that the Municipality "unfortunately, even after a year, does not even recognize that there is a problem, which shows that it does not have the desire or capacity to actively protect this area."
"Among the old trees along the road, there are several old Skadar oaks that the locals deliberately kept from cutting down, not knowing that they were protecting the only protected oak in Montenegro, whose once vast forests are now reduced mainly to individual trees and rows of trees. Apart from the fact that these are old trees among which is a protected species of oak, these trees can increase their value many times over in a new way, which is still not recognized in Montenegro, and investors and contractors rarely adapt their projects to nature".
"Then it is not unusual why the citizens of Montenegro feel that they always have to choose between the tree or the road, not knowing that they can and that the only mirror of a healthy society is if they have both," concludes the CDE.
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