BUCHAREST, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Romania's Forestry Ministry launched on Friday a web portal of timber legal exploitation and transport, in a bid to combat the illegal forest cutting.
"Today we launch a new system through which we hope to get rid of illegal logging in Romania," Environment, Waters and Forestry Minister Cristiana Pasca Palmer told a press conference.
The portal "InspectorulPadurii.ro" operates satellite images and overlaps them, almost in real time, on electronic maps to track any change in the structure of forest vegetation.
According to the minister, through the new application, any illegal cutting will generate an alert to the authorized bodies.
Romania has the largest area of virgin forests in the European Union, but has become in latest decades a country most affected by illegal logging in Europe.
The Bucharest authorities claimed that the volume of the illegally logged wood was some 80 million cubic meters over the past two decades, while the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) estimated that around half of all logging in Romania is illegal.
And the agency said the majority of illegal logging cases it uncovered, the wood ended up in the supply chain of a major Austrian timber company.
In September, Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos designated illegal logging a threat to national security and called on citizens to get involved in protection and restoration of forests.
