While 76 percent of the forest area in Croatia is owned by the state and constantly patrolled and protected, the situation in private forests that stretch over 600,000 hectares is chaotic, the Vecernji List (VL) daily reported on Monday.

The demand has increased since energy prices started rising, and in the first eleven months of 2022, 528 cases of wood theft were recorded in Croatia, according to the daily.

Every day, heavy tow trucks pull logs out of the forest, and the local roads are so destroyed and rutted that we can’t get to our houses even by tractors, especially when it’s raining. No one knows who is felling trees and for whom, but it isn’t stopping, desperate residents of Karlovac County’s rural areas have reported.

According to Marin Svetic, head of the Karlovac branch of the Forestry Administration, the demand for firewood has increased significantly in recent years, notably since energy prices have risen.

The problem of the increased number of log thefts mainly occurs in private forests, which comprise a quarter of the total forests in Croatia and the situation in those forests is within the remit of their owners. We do not have current data for them. They can be organised for the protection of forests within associations of private forest owners, and the Advisory Service at the Ministry of Agriculture is also at their disposal. Private forest properties are primarily small, they cover about 600,000 hectares in total, and the number of owners is almost the same, the Hrvatske Sume forest management company added.

There is absolute chaos in private forests, and the worst situation is in the region of Kordun. For the most part, forest owners where illegal logging is taking place do not live in Croatia but permit logging companies to cut their forests. Yet, they cannot control what these companies are doing, and the companies often exploit this situation.