TIRANA, March 22 – Albania is one of the Balkan countries to have faced the largest deforestation rates in the past 25 years of its transition after the collapse of the country’s communist regime in the early 1990s, World Bank data shows.
The country is estimated to have lost 170 km2 of forests since 1990 with its 2015 forest area at 7,715 km2, at about a quarter of the country’s surface area. The huge losses rank Albania almost worse compared to other regional countries that have gained new forest areas in the past 25 years, except for Bosnia and Herzegovina which lost 250 km2 of woods.
The situation is alarming as Albania’s forest area is smaller even compared to smaller countries such as neighboring Montenegro and Macedonia. Deforestation in Albania has been mainly a result of massive illegal logging for firewood and intentional burning to open up new pastures for sheep and cattle with a negative impact on the environment and the economy, often causing massive flooding due to soil erosion.
To curb the phenomenon, back in early 2016, the Albanian Parliament approved a ten-year moratorium on wood-cutting in the country. The ban is valid for industry or export purposes, whereas logging for heating purposes was allowed albeit under the supervision of local authorities.
Despite the ban being in force for about a year, illegal logging in remote areas is reported to continue although at a slower pace. The logging ban has triggered a hike in prices of firewood, massively used for warming in rural areas, and has led to an increase in imports for the country’s wood processing industry.
In addition to resulting in significant habitat and biodiversity loss, deforestation is also considered as an exacerbating factor in the recent string of floods that the country has faced as a result of massive soil erosion, claiming lives and causing hundreds of millions of euros in damage.
“In recent decades, flooding has worsened as a result of deforestation, overgrazing and erosion, combined with a lack of maintenance of drainage canals and pumping stations,” says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO.
In addition to the human factor, FAO has warned Albania’s vast and valuable forests, which cover more than one a third of the country’s territory, are also under threat from the rapid spread of the pine processionary moth. The pest has damaged 75 percent of the nation’s European black pines, a native tree that makes up 25 percent of Albania’s high forests.
