Where do Bulgaria’s waters disappear?
Doubtlessly water is the most precious source of life, but people do tend to waste it. More and more forest brooks and springs are getting thinner, the level of dams and lakes is getting down… What are the reasons for this? Is it climate change or human interference? Besides global warming and drought there is another reason that might turn this beautiful land into a desert – the large-scaled logging of century-old forests. According to Chair of the Association of Parks in Bulgaria Toma Belev logging grows in a rapid and threatening manner. 5 years ago it was 4 mln. and 100 thousand m3, while in 2011 it went up to 7 mln. and 300 thousand cubic meters.
“The last usage of such quantities was back in 1959 and it started to go gradually down afterwards. Today we witness a tremendous usage of Bulgaria’s green wealth. Both century-old forests and the results from any forestry activities over the last 100 years are subject to logging. Our main concern is that we start to lose the last trees from Magnum Silva Bulgarorum – The Great Bulgarian Forest – that is how medieval writers used to describe the forest between Sredets /Sofia/ and Plovdiv, part of the Balkan Range and the Rila and Rhodope mountains. It was dark, impassable, thick and famous with its ancient huge trees. There are few remains of this forest right now. Barely 6 percent of our forests are over 100 years old and exactly those are currently a subject of different kinds of logging. Instead of protecting them, we wipe them out, with all the environmental consequences.”
Toma Belev says that people are practically unaware of what happens to our forests without any public control. It is not a secret that a large part of the wood is exported to neighboring Greece and Turkey, where its consumption goes up as an alternative to expensive electricity and other fuels. Thus this logging affects the waters of Bulgaria in the following way:
“Being an irreplaceable reservoir of biodiversity, old beech trees are capable of keeping the rain and snowy water, inserting it beneath the soil. When the forest is younger, this absorption is much worse, subterranean waters are not properly supplied and start to dry off. Many dry fountains can be spotted in the mountains for that reason. Climate has prepared challenges for a while too. For instance, the amount of winter rainfalls on mountain Vitosha’s highest peak – Cherni Vrah, has dropped by 50 percent for the past 20 years. Rainfalls have not been evenly dispensed lately over the year, as 5-6 large ones concentrate with 100 – 150 l/m2. We face more floods too, due to the insufficiency of forests that are old enough to capture the water and turn it into a subterranean one. There are currently over 20 projects for the creation of electricity from wood biomass. There is also a possibility for increasing of wood consumption in industry. This means for instance new 3 – 4 mln. m3 that will be fatal for the forests, for the country and for its citizens. That is why the politicians should take a clear decision on whether such investments should be encouraged.”
Radiesthesist Ivan Todorov says that droughts have been constantly winning the battle against rainfalls ever since 2000. In his words, there are 5 dry years for each 6 rainy ones in a cycle of 11 years, while over the 1990s that ratio was 9:2.
“The Earth has been practically ill since 2000. Vertical and horizontal ocean currents have changed, hence the movement of all cyclones and anticyclones over Europe has changed too. Temperatures and direct fronts that change the seasons in these latitudes changed too. This all led to the common abnormalities – the entire rain quantity for a whole year can fall within a single month only. Many water sources have dried too. Wells, deep up to 15 – 18 meters dried in 2005 – 2006. There were periods of over 4 months without rainfalls in 2011 – 2012. Layers at a depth of 25 – 35 m are now dry, i.e. water flees away from us deeper and deeper. The springs and fountains that our forests were famous with are disappearing too. The flows of the rivers are reduced to the minimum and unfortunately this alarming trend will be kept. The Earth is not the same anymore and we cannot expect a restoration of its water supplies to the amount we were used to. This should be taken into consideration at a very high level,” the expert says in conclusion.
Source: bnr.bg