A newly approved plan to build a national road through two of Romania's most precious protected areas will destroy some of Europe's last intact forests. The Romanian National Environment Agency has granted permission to build Road 66A through the Retezat mountains and Domogled National Park, part of the Carpathian mountains.The areas are two of Romania's flagship protected areas, and home to Europe's last intact forest landscape outside of Russia and Finland.
Acconring to WWF, the 66A project was approved in breach of environmental legislation, and the Romanian National Environment Protection Agency has ignored the fact that the road would cross a strictly protected area and that the environmental impact assessment study was deemed to be of poor quality and did not mention the potential devastating effects of the road's construction.
A series of protests led by NGO Agent Green and supported by WWF and Greenpeace, to stop the road's construction have taken place over the past two years, culminating with a protest in front of the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Forests, last July.
Agent Green is planning to take the Romanian government to court and make a complaint to the European Commission because the decision is in breach of environmental legislation. The European Commission has already instigated several penalty procedures against the country for not complying with the law when it comes to nature protection.
In March this year, Agent Green revealed that the company which was hired to prepare the environmental impact assessment study committed fraud. The university professor whose signature appears on the study has said that he never signed an environmental impact assessment study, only a preliminary research study. Moreover, an environmental impact assessment study for an area rich in biodiversity such as Retezat mountains and Domogled National Park should take no less than 3 years, while the study presented by the authorities took five days to complete.
An alternative environmental impact assessment study was carried out by experts from the Babes Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, with the contribution of experts from several conservation organizations. The study revealed that the biodiversity in the areas was much higher than stated in the previous study and that the third section of the national road, which is planned to be 19 km long, would dramatically affect the protected areas and their biodiversity.
The controversy over national road 66A began five years ago. At the time, two stretches of the road were illegally constructed before any approval of the Environment Protection Agency or of the Retezat National Park Administration. For the past four years, environmentalists have successfully stopped the construction of the third section of the road which, if built, would pass through the core zone of Domogled National Park and thus destroy the intact forest landscape.
Romania's road plan come as the United Nations has designated 2011 as the International Year of the Forests