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During the three decades of transition, the forests of Albania have gone towards a drastic decline.
Centuries-old pines, sparse firs and thousands of hectares of natural forests were cut down, burned and exploited without any criteria, recording one of the largest forest massacres.
In Qafën e Malit in the area of Puka, at an altitude of 1 thousand meters above sea level, once, on both sides of this road accompanied hundreds of years old pines
has already turned into the desert.
Evidence of the massacre on these forests are still these tree trunks lying in the woods and mountains completely bare.
With an area of about 90 thousand ha of forests, Puka has lost from illegal logging and fires over the years about 60 thousand hectares, ie 2/3 of the entire fund.
Unlike the period of communism when every surface that was deforested was replaced, during these 30 years almost nothing has been done. During the dictatorship, 200 thousand hectares of forests for arable land were deforested, but they were replaced by the afforestation of another area of 400 thousand hectares, ie double.
After the fall of monism the locals or various companies sewed to the mountains leaving behind wastelands, which take decades and perhaps centuries to renew.
“It is beyond human life a forest, the tree that you plant today can never be used as long as you are alive. And this is a completely different concept. People often compare the forest with agriculture, but the forest is not agriculture, it is not one year old, it is not a few years old, it is in the long run“, Said Genti Kormidha, Institute for Nature Conservation.
Albania may be considered the only country in the world that has forests on the map, but no trees.
Data collected from various studies show that during the transition from 1990-2017 over 339,000 ha of forest area were exploited without criteria, stolen and illegally cut.
This dramatic truth is confirmed by the latest forest inventory, the second realized after that of 2004.
According to this inventory over the last three decades Albania has lost about 40% of total forests. Also, the area with virgin forests has decreased by 85%, or from 70 thousand ha that was in 1997, today we have only about 11 thousand ha. In total we have 1.3 million ha of forests, but 80% of them are young forests, so they still do not have wood material to be considered valuable as forest economy.
“What is alarming is what these forests have. And unfortunately from the data of the 90s when a volume of 80 million m3 of timber was reported, today we have 50 ml m3, which means we have lost 30 million m3 or every year we have lost 1 million m3 “said Genti Kormidha , Institute for Nature Conservation
This annual loss of 1 million m3 of timber can lead to total deforestation in the not too distant future.
“This means that after 50 years we will not have forests in Albania, even though we will have green areas “, said Genti Kormidha, Institute for Nature Conservation.
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