Ecologists protest fate of burnt Achaia forest
Four months after suspected land-grabbers razed a chunk of the Strofilia forest in western Achaia, in the Peloponnese, authorities have not made good on pledges to regenerate the area, environmentalists have told Kathimerini. «Nature has been left alone to tend to its own wounds,» said Giorgos Kanelis of the Ecological Movement of Patras. He said there has been no follow-up to pledges to designate Strofilia a national park. Kanelis added that the 20-hectare section of razed pine forest has been neither cordoned off nor cleared. A representative of the local association appointed to manage the forest said two studies have been commissioned: one for the felling and removal of burnt timber from the site and another for regeneration. But local forestry expert Ilias Dress claims these have yet to get off the ground. «They have stalled due to a lack of funding,» he said.
