Controls continue in forests in the Pljevlja and Mojkovac areas

After discovering illegal logging and abuse of orders for supplying the rural population with firewood in the Berane and Rožaje areas and filing criminal charges against the management of the Forestry Administration, State Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management Andrija Delić and Head of the Forestry Directorate Ranko Kankaraš are continuing inspections in forests in the Pljevlja and Mojkovac areas.

This is stated in a joint statement signed by Delić and Kankaraš.

According to them, the temporary halt in conducting the checks is the result of a physical injury that Delić suffered in April of this year.

"The reason for the controls are several reports from citizens of Pljevlja and Mojkovac submitted to the ministry or to the two of us personally. If the allegations in the reports prove to be true, it will mean that the intensity of illegal activities in Berane and Rožaje is no less than in Pljevlja and Mojkovac. Namely, several citizens have previously submitted photographs and video materials that testify to the destruction of forests, and if their authenticity is confirmed, this will result in new criminal reports for illegal logging. We hereby inform the public that the Police Directorate in Bijelo Polje has already filed one criminal report for the misuse of logs in a sawmill in the Bijelo Polje area, which, according to the Forestry Directorate's documents, originate from the Pljevlja area and were intended for use in supplying wood to the rural population," the statement states.

Delić and Kankaraš said that the 2025 State Audit Institution Report showed the drastic scale of forest destruction in the forest areas of Montenegro, and that the report was based on satellite images provided by the European Commission and delivered by the European Space Agency. The report talks about the loss of a huge 587,1 square kilometers of primary forests in the period 2021-2024, and the ecological damage caused from 58 to 170 million euros per year.

The report, as they state, points to the expansion of illegal logging and the destruction of our most valuable forests, but also to the fact that there are strong indications that the most responsible persons in the management structures of the Forest Administration give legitimacy to such actions.

"This is because the deforestation was initiated directly by orders of the acting director of the Forest and Hunting Management Administration, in the form of allocating firewood and technical wood to the rural population," said Delić and Kankaraš.

They add that what is currently most devastating in the system is the fact that Montenegro's total revenue from forest use in 2025 amounted to only 5,2 million euros, that the highest quality trees are being cut down for such a pittance, and that dry and diseased trees, as well as trees of poor quality, currently remain in our forests, and that it is estimated that half a million cubic meters of such wood is currently rotting in the forests, while officials of the Forest Administration claim that the situation in the forests has never been better.

"It is also devastating that in the north of Montenegro, the number of forestry and wood processing companies that have filed for bankruptcy has drastically increased in the last two years, which means that these activities are dying out despite the enormous natural potential that exists for the development of these activities," they concluded.