The ancient forests and animal life of the Danube-Carpathian region of Central and Eastern Europe are increasingly victims of wildlife crime and illegal logging, says a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment). 

The report highlights the scale of the problem globally: environmental crime is valued at between $90bn and $258bn a year, making it the fourth largest type of criminal activity in the world. 

In the Danube-Carpathian region research carried out by UN Environment, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Eurac Research focussed on illegal logging, illegal fishing of sturgeon, the illegal killing of birds and the poaching of large carnivores in what it describes as “one of the continent’s last remaining biodiversity hotspots”. 

“The facts are frightening. Europe’s last remaining old-growth forests and their unique biodiversity are disappearing at alarming rates,” says the report. 

“[D]espite being protected and covered by numerous policies, conventions and organisations, the Danube-Carpathian region remains under increased threat and pressures from illegal logging and wildlife crimes. The mountainous region is furthermore known to contain environment-related illegal trafficking routes, including for wood, animals, animal parts and wastes.”

Despite gains for those involved in illegal wildlife trade and logging, the wider negative economic impact is considerable. In Romania alone, a Court of Auditors report estimates the losses to the Romanian caused by illegal logging at over €5bn between 1990 and 2011. 

“The looting of these natural resources undermines development and deprives governments of the money they need to promote jobs, education and health services,” said Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, in a statement.

Romania is the location of some of Europe’s last and most extensive old-growth primary forests, with over 6.5mn hectares (ha) of forest in total including 218,000 ha of virgin forest at the last count in 2004. At the same time, however, Romania is one of Europe’s largest timber producers, and the extent of illegal logging is still unclear, though the problem has been flagged up repeatedly by environmental groups and is recognised by the government in Bucharest as a serious concern. 

The 2013 study by the Romanian Court of Auditors estimated that between 1990 and 2011, 80mn cubic metres (cm) of timber — 24% of the total volume of wood cut during the period — were cut illegally. Another study, also cited by the UNEP report, by the National Institute for Research and Development in Forestry found that between 2008 and 2014, 26.8mn cm per year were harvested, including 8.8mn cm illegally harvested. 

“Since 2015, Romanian authorities have stepped up action and made considerable progress with reducing illegal activities, such as the setting up of wood tracking tools or the reform of control bodies,” says the report. “However, more needs to be done to protect this natural wealth, as well as other forests in the Carpathian region, from illegal logging activities.”

The report also looks at the plundering of the region’s animal populations, from illegal hunting of bears and other large carnivores to killing wild birds that are then smuggled out of the region to appear on the menus of high-end restaurants in Italy, Malta and other countries. 

Other animals that have fallen victim to environmental crime include large carnivores; the region is one of the few remaining habitats for bears, wolves and lynxes in Europe. Large carnivore poaching is a serious threat for local wildlife populations in all the Carpathian countries, warns the UNEP. 

“National experts believe that the reasons for poaching have changed over time: 15-20 years ago, poaching was mainly a form of retaliation for damages caused by large carnivores, while currently the main reasons for poaching is trophy hunting, hunting for leisure and meat trafficking,” says the report. 

The illegal killing, taking and trading of wild birds is part of a wider problem seen across the Mediterranean region, where wild birds are either killed to sell as a culinary delicacy or kept alive to become cage birds or hunting decoys. 

The region is a hotspot since it lines on the Mediterranean/Black Sea Flyway, one of three Palaearctic-African flyways connecting Europe with Africa, which together make up the world’s largest bird migration system with over 6.5bn birds migrating from their breeding grounds in Europe and central and western Asia to tropical Africa each winter. 

“The large number of birds flying annually through the region makes the Mediterranean basin susceptible to the illegal killing, taking and trading of wild birds. The high level of biodiversity and great number of native birds in the region also increases the risk of wildlife crime. Consequently, southeast Europe has been one of the hotspots for wild bird crime for decades,” says the report. 

Other crimes examined by the report include the illegal fishing of sturgeon and the illicit caviar trade, which has persisted despite a legal framework prohibiting sturgeon fishing in all the Lower Danube countries. 

To a large extent the poverty of the region and the upheavals of the transition period are a motivating factor for environmental crime. It includes some of the poorest countries in Europe, many of which have a large development gap between the relatively wealthy urban areas and much poorer rural regions. 

“Illegal trafficking of wildlife and its products, including logging has become a highly lucrative criminal activity with a relatively low risk of detection. The research presented in this study confirms this is true not only globally but also in the EU and more specifically in the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe,” says the report. 

Where large carnivore poaching in the Carpathian countries is concerned, the main reported region is the poverty of rural populations, who are able to make money from selling both skins and skeletons as trophies plus the meat, fat and other parts of the body. On top of this, there are deep-rooted hunting traditions in the region. 

Policy also plays a role in enabling illegal wildlife trade. For example, weak border control has allowed the Ukraine-Romania border area to become a hotspot for poaching. Meanwhile, despite a ban on illegal fishing and caviar trade, local fishermen haven’t been compensated for their lost income. 

The transition process also accelerated Romania’s illegal logging problem; the collapse of the communist system resulted in large parts of the countryside being abandoned and mass rural depopulation. The often murky privatisation process for forest land has dragged on until today, with a number of privatisations later being overturned and rulings challenged. One consequence of the privatisation of forests is that there are now many more isolated and fragmented forest areas, says the report, which points to studies suggesting this has a negative impact on Romania’s protected area networks.