The Mediterranean forest ecosystems of our country consist largely of natural, self-sown mixed forests with enormous biodiversity in flora and fauna—features that make them unique and beautiful. They also include extensive areas of semi-mountainous and mountainous pastures, shrublands, and bare forest lands, which together cover more than 70% of the land area of our country. It is no coincidence that they are the subject of research and study by scientists worldwide.
The management applied to our productive forests is limited to the annual harvesting of some primary forest products, under the framework of relevant management studies, but in practice without following the rules of sustainable management and harvesting as prescribed by forestry science. At the same time, the most expensive methods of fire suppression are employed—firefighting airplanes and helicopters. In other words, our forests are not managed sustainably, according to the principles of forestry science, for the following reasons:
- Thinning of young and dense stands is not carried out.
- There is no silvicultural treatment of forests through the removal of old and diseased trees.
- Reforestation is not undertaken.
- The vast majority of our forests are unmanaged.
- Forest fires, a scourge of continuously increasing frequency, are inadequately addressed.
With a misguided and hasty decision of the government in 1998, the suppression of forest fires was taken away from the Forest Service and assigned to the Fire Brigade, whose personnel do not know forest ecosystems or the vast areas they cover, since they have not studied the subject and their primary work does not take place within forests. In contrast, the Forest Service, with all its specialized staff (foresters, forestry technologists, rangers, fire lookouts), since its establishment has had as its primary work the management of our forests. It works and specializes within the forests and forest lands of our country and thus knows the terrain perfectly. For decades, it produced valuable work in all areas of forestry, including forest protection and fire suppression.
Therefore, its responsibility for fire suppression was unjustifiably removed, and as a second mistake, forest protection was entrusted to it with meager funding. Indicative is the comparison of forest fires and burned areas in the two different periods. The wrong policy was completed with the simultaneous gradual shrinking of the Forest Service and with nearly all forest funding being channeled into fire suppression—when it is universally accepted that effective forest protection is achieved through organized prevention and sustainable management.
As a country, we have committed through the international agreements of Helsinki (1993) and Madrid (1998) to manage our forests sustainably, and to certify, through an independent national body, both the sustainable management of our forests and that wood products come from sustainably managed forests (forest certification under PEFC or FSC). Yet we do not fulfill these commitments, making us an exception in all of Europe.
We cannot even use our own forest timber—or furniture and constructions made from Greek wood—in national projects, because our legislation requires the use of certified structural timber. Thus, in large and small public works, municipalities, organizations, etc., we use imported certified structural timber and wood products (parquet, paneling, ceilings).
It should be noted that the high-quality structural timber of fir and pine from our forests is the best in Europe, since our forests are natural forests, not artificial plantations of fast-growing species like the certified imported structural timber.
It should also be emphasized that forest products from our forests include not only timber, but also other products such as forest honey, mushrooms, chestnuts and other fruits of forest trees and shrubs, resin products, Chios mastic (a product of the mastic tree), leaf litter, chemical extracts of bark and wood used for perfumes, medicines, tanning agents, and more. According to existing European legislation, these products must also be certified as originating from sustainably managed forests—that is, they must acquire the PEFC or FSC label.
It is a fact that a large percentage of environmentally conscious European citizens prefer to purchase wooden furniture and constructions, wooden houses, and all forest and wood products only if they carry forest certification, since they have realized the enormous importance of forests for life, culture, and development. Such things happen across Europe, while in our country unfortunately, every summer we mourn the destruction of our forests, often due to arson aimed at turning forest land into building plots.
A first consequence of the existing situation in our country is that the harvesting of forest products is limited to only two main categories: roundwood (logs) of conifers and broadleaves for sawing in sawmills, and fuelwood/timber for chipping. In practice, harvesting of forest products has for years been carried out in irregular ways, as a consequence of the decline of both the Forest Service and forest cooperatives.
Let us not forget that all types of activities within forest ecosystems and the wider districts of Forest Services were carried out under the State Forest Enterprises (KED) system, with direct management and great success, involving thousands of forestry workers from cooperatives and other craftsmen and workers from mountainous and semi-mountainous Greece. Within this framework also operated Greece’s first pioneering wood industries (in Kalambaka, Litochoro, Fourna-Evrytania, Artemisia, etc.), where since the 1950s model sawmills, impregnation plants, steaming plants, particleboard factories, and prefabricated wooden housing units served as models for private enterprise. Unfortunately, these units were also shut down, though they should have been maintained to continue in practice the costly processes of grading and certification of wood products, and the adoption of new technologies in drying, impregnation, sawing, etc.
This forest policy contributed greatly to the depopulation of semi-mountainous and mountainous Greece, because it resulted in the collapse of all forest-related activities: forest management (thinning, cleaning, removal of old and diseased trees, reforestation), forest engineering projects (plans for forest works, opening tens of thousands of kilometers of forest roads and maintaining them, torrent management, revegetation of slopes and pastures, spring water collection, water transfer works for drinking and irrigation, construction of reservoirs and animal shelters in alpine pastures, etc.), management of mountain pastures, harvesting and transport of forest products to processing units. Many of these activities took place in semi-mountainous and mountainous Greece, whose workforce shrank significantly, and the few who remained moved to cities, since their employment time was drastically reduced. This policy has had negative consequences on the quality of our forests, which now suffer windthrow and snow damage, as well as infestations from biotic and abiotic agents, such as diseases affecting fir, cypress, plane, elm, etc.
Mountainous Greece suffered another blow from the state with the passage of Law 3852/2010 “Kallikratis”, which through administrative mergers led many areas to no longer be officially considered mountainous, even though geomorphologically they are. As a result, these areas faced negative consequences in taxation, subsidies, and funding criteria.
Greece also holds another negative record in Europe: 70% of forest biomass harvested annually is used as firewood in fireplaces and stoves. This might be justified to some extent in mountainous and semi-mountainous villages, but it is outrageous that city markets are filled with commercial firewood shops, causing wintertime smog. A significant proportion of this firewood could, after proper processing and finishing, be used to produce high-quality furniture, wooden structures, and wooden crafts.
Specialists in forest management believe it is a mistake that the largest share of forest funding is directed toward fire suppression, with only a minimal share allocated to management, prevention, and protection. The allocation of billions of euros to open large firebreaks along forest roadsides, under the “Antinero” program, is also considered wasteful, with little effect, and funds end up with a few contractors.
It is deemed necessary to allocate increased funding to forests, primarily for the reorganization and reestablishment of the severely diminished Forest Service, and for the implementation of sustainable management and protection of our forests. Such a forest policy would provide better protection, improve forest quality, and provide employment to people working in the semi-mountainous and mountainous regions of our country, thus strengthening the abandoned countryside. In other words, there is a need for a change in forest policy, by applying the basic principles of the policy implemented from 1950 to 1990, which had positive results for both our forests and development in mountainous Greece.
Proper forest management, along with PEFC or FSC forest certification for our forests, forest products, and their derivatives, will gradually increase the production of primary forest products, such as sawn structural timber, thin roundwood for construction, hewn timber, utility poles, stakes, wood pellets, etc.
Let us not forget that the highest duty of every generation is to hand down the forest wealth to the next generations, because quite simply there is no future without our forests. If Greeks truly loved their forests, they would protect them and, through the power of their vote, compel those in power to continuously implement the forest policy described above.
