Threats

Ski resorts –their construction inevitably involves felling trees en masse. This affects the air, water and soil in the area; besides, the sites appropriate for ski tracks in Bulgaria at an altitude of over 1500 metres are situated inside National Parks created in order to preserve Bulgarian nature. If one half of the projects for new and already existing ski resorts get implemented, Bulgaria will offer over 500 km of ski tracks managed by mixed companies with more than 50 % private ownership. The construction permits issued inside National Parks, in violation of several acts, demonstrate an environmentally unfriendly approach and management of the “sites”. The only thing that local people get is ruined nature, water-supply problems, short-time mass tourism and the impossibility to promote sustainable tourism and local businesses in the future.

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Bansko Ski Zone


Golf courses – at first sight, these are green fields, almost like parks. However, setting them up means that wild vegetation has to be removed entirely. The grass mixtures planted consist of species untypical for the region, and with Bulgarian climate, the courses need abundant and regular watering as well as chemical treatment. In addition, some of the projected golf courses overlap with valuable natural habitats. Thus, Bulgarian preserved nature turns into a “green desert” with an area of 50 to 200 hectares, where no wild animals and birds house and whose maintenance creates the risks of water supply shortages and chemical pollution of the whole region.

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The golf course near Bozhurets


Wind power stations – they are an alternative and environmentally clean source of energy, but large wind farms located across the migration routes of birds become their murderers. Wind power stations are an attractive enterprise (for big investors), because according to the EU requirements, the state is obliged to produce a certain percent of its energy in an “ecological” way, and also buy energy produced in such a way. However, the state has to start controlling strictly the issuing of permits and the implementation of environmental impact assessments, taking into consideration the exceptional diversity of bird species and the fact that Via Pontica, one of the three most important migration routes in Europe, passes over Bulgaria.


Water power stations and small water power stations - they are another alternative source of energy, but their excessive construction on rivers and tributaries with irregular flows can make these rivers dry up, completely or periodically, and disturb the ecological balance of the whole region. For local people, this means a deficit of water resources and diminishing possibilities for promoting tourism. For nature, it means the extinction of animal and plant species inhabiting rivers and the permanent destruction of river habitats. Just like wind power stations, water power stations are a profitable and quick returning investment because of the state commitment to produce and buy energy from renewable sources. However, we are still lacking clear rules, normative criteria and hydroelectric energy standards.


Cyanide gold extraction – cyanides are chemical compounds normally found in nature in extremely low, harmless concentrations. However, extracting gold with technologies that use cyanides and transporting and storing cyanides raise their concentration in the soil, water and air, turning them into a poison with an almost immediate effect on living organisms, including human beings. Cyanides are lethal because they block the access of oxygen to cells during inhaling, and if absorbed, even small quantities of them are toxic. A brief exposure to high concentrations of cyanides through breathing, direct skin contact or oral intake harms the brain, the heart and can lead to coma or death. The long-term consequence of using cyanides is their accumulation in soils and groundwaters which spread them around and pollute the surrounding areas.

Read more: “Rhodopes without Cyanides” campaign


Overdevelopment at the Black Sea coast – the construction of huge and eclectic hotels which we’ve witnessed in recent years is not just an act of bad taste and improvidence. It is the joint result of law violations, appetites for quick profits, money laundering, lack of information and carelessness for the environment. The consequence is: depriving the local people of the possibility to manage their own lands and promote ecological tourism in which they would be encouraged and financed by the European Union; depriving the state of EU environmental funds and imposing fines on it, to be paid by the common taxpayers; turning the Black Sea coast into a resort with a limited access for the population; destroying Bulgarian nature and ruining the country’s chance to become one of the most desirable tourist destinations – a chance offered by our well-preserved nature and denied to most “developed” countries.

Village in Strandja Nature Park
Irakli
Camchia Sands


Deforestation – In Bulgaria in the 1950s, forests were destroyed en masse. They took half a century to restore, and their restoration has not been complete. Nowadays, forests are being clearcut everywhere again. Many valuable forests in the plains and foothills have been destroyed. With expensive fuels and electric power, the state encourages wood heating. This has benefited hundreds of timber private companies, which have been clearfelling forests massively.

Deforestation leads to ecological catastrophes. Trees act as natural air filters. Besides, mass felling upsets the natural balance through many secondary effects – erosion, landslides, washing off the surface soil layer, drying up, salinization and so on. Most insect-eaters and birds of prey nest in forests and feed in the neighbouring agricultural areas. Destroying their nesting grounds increases the risk of mass reproduction of rodents and insects. This in turn forces farmers to use chemicals to protect their crops, which is expensive and dangerous. The most preserved forests are included in the protected territories and sites, but the law is violated on a daily basis. Cutting down riverside forests which reinforce banks is one of the main reasons for floods during the high water season.

Quarries – the scramble for easy profits and the violated auction procedures in the last years have led to the opening of hundreds of illegal quarries (for sand, limestone, loess, basalt, schists). Most of them are located in places where there are no high-quality or sufficient resources, but they have the sole advantage of being close to the respective construction sites and allowing the company that won the tender to economize on transport expenses. The opening of quarries in unsuitable places leads to an irrevocable destruction of both the landscape and populations of rare and endangered plant and animal species, to loss of resources for the local people, to dangerous landslides and erosion. Often, the attempts to legalize the quarries involve documents forgery and violating the national legislation:

The quarry near Muselievo in the Nikopol Municipality