Hundreds of trees cut down on pretext of storm Martinho
Public prosecutors have an unusual new probe on their hands: trying to track down who walked off with eight hectares worth of lumber from a forested area in Aguiar da Beira.
It won’t be an easy task: SIC Notícias has painted the scenario as a brazen act allowed to take place (on the pretext of storm Martinho in March) while the local parish council president “whistled to the side” (meaning, turned a blind eye).
Arlinho Monteiro is described as a former timber merchant (as if this somehow makes him more likely to have ‘whistled to the side’).
Interviewed by SIC, Monteiro has said he has no idea who walked off with all the wood – much of it having fallen during the violent storm on March 20 – but presumes that they “will have needed it”.
It is not quite the way parish council president’s are meant to deal with situations of forestry theft on such a large scale – and this is what has led to the Public Prosecutor’s probe.
ICNF – the institute for nature conservation and forestries – was initially alerted to the missing trees via “a local complaint” a week after storm Martinho. The institute contacted GNR police, and so the investigations began.
As reports stress; “Aguiar da Beira is the poorer: eight hectares of forest has disappeared, depriving private parish councils and the ICNF of important revenue. Public prosecutors will have to conclude whether this constitutes theft, or whether the felling (of so many trees) was authorised” – and, if so, by whom, and under what terms.
What seems unlikely is that this removal of eight hectares of forest could have taken place without anyone noticing: thousands of trees were cut down, in the space of just a week. Local people must have an idea who will have done it.
SIC’s report talks of “unwritten authorisations in the year of municipal elections”.
Source: SIC Notícias
