Reporting on forests (when they are not burning)

“The necessary reforestation proceeded at a great speed (editor’s note: in Evia)”, I was surprised to hear the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, say from the podium of the Parliament during his speech on the 2024 fire season report.

A few months earlier, I had the opportunity to conduct an in-depth investigation for Inside Story on the topic and knew that extensive reforestation had not been carried out in the region, but only a pilot project involving a small area of 51 acres. I say small because the government has decided to reforest 938.38 hectares in Northern Evia after the 2021 fires.

In another dimension, the day after the Prime Minister's statements, we would have articles fact-checking what was said in his speech, and perhaps such a false statement would become more widely known.

The bitter truth is that in the modern journalistic sphere, forests are mainly of interest to us when they are burning, providing television images of despair but also space for conflict and mutual accusations. We honor the heroes –firefighters and forestry employees– a few days after the fire and demand reforestation until the next disaster comes, which makes us forget everything. And we remember them again next summer, with the next big fire.

However, it's not just the media and journalists to blame –who may not provide the space and time for such topics– but also society itself, which only when it's “burning”, literally, turns its gaze to our precious forests.

So, from this perspective, how easy is it for a journalist to conduct investigations into forests “off-season”?

Is limited information proportional to demand, or the other way around?

When my editor-in-chief, Katerina Lomvardea, told me that there are public forestry nurseries in decline and assigned me to investigate the topic, I was surprised. The only nurseries I knew until then were the ones we see in neighborhoods, with indoor and outdoor plants. Even when I searched the term online, there were very few articles, and very short in length.

Admittedly, in our country, we don’t have many media outlets that provide space for journalists to specialize in environmental reporting. Most of us who occasionally –but not exclusively– engage with this, mainly operate in the sphere of “freelance reporting”. This, in itself, creates the problem that it’s not always easy to stay informed about everything happening in the field, and it’s not easy to cultivate sources, making it even harder to convince your media outlet to “pick up” a story that usually doesn’t “sell”.

However, even when all the conditions favor such an investigation, like in my case where a media outlet sheds light on environmental issues, is willing to assign you a forest report, and gives you the necessary time to focus on it, it is extremely complicated to carry it out successfully.

Initially, the coverage of forest issues is very limited. Therefore, even when you start researching, there isn’t a large volume of published material that can help you get started.

Gleaning information from the internet, I quickly realized that everything I wanted to learn about forests could be found on dasarxeio.com. This is perhaps the only website in the country dedicated exclusively to forest issues, functioning as a blog created by forestry employees for their own information. For anyone interested in forestry, it’s an excellent resource. Thanks to their posts, such as an interview with the chief officer of the forestry department of Agrinio, I gradually began to understand the critical role that forestry nurseries play in reforestation.

Beyond the above –and a few publications that one might find sporadically in the media or reports and announcements from large environmental organizations like WWF and Greenpeace– the only remaining tool is to find people in the field to talk to.

Seeing the (burning) tree, we lose sight of the people behind the forests

Most people who are well aware of issues related to forest management and reforestation are undoubtedly the employees at the local forestry departments. Unfortunately, for my case, these are public employees who are prohibited from speaking to journalists without approval from a superior.

Although most of those who answered my calls refused to speak to me, I was struck by how obvious it was that they had a strong need to tell me a lot. Feeling that someone finally wanted to listen to them, not to search for the blame behind the fires, but to shed light on the assessment or prevention of a fire they work on every day, they fleetingly shared information that illuminated the bigger picture: “I wouldn’t want to talk, because I’ve been through so much with our nursery”, “a reforestation study in our area? I don’t remember anything relevant, I should look it up, but I don’t have time”, “I don’t have time to talk, I’m on my own now. I’m on the verge of quitting, I’m tired of this job. If they don’t hire permanent staff in the forestry services, we won’t have anyone to hand the keys to when we leave”, are some of the things I heard.

So, inevitably, starting from the reforestations, we were led to a larger problem, which expanded to the terrifying understaffing of the forestry corps and the underperformance of forestry nurseries throughout the country, which leads exactly to what we see today: the absence of plants for replanting in the burned areas of Evia.

The Ministry's stance

Ultimately, the forestry offices referred to the Reforestation Directorates, which in turn referred to the Ministry of the Environment and Energy. The written request to the Ministry was, therefore, a one-way street.

Experience has shown that if you're not a journalist working for a large media outlet or not covering a specific Ministry exclusively, the waiting time for an official response to your question often exceeds one week, at best, and at worst, you're simply ignored – despite the fact that the law states that every citizen should receive a response within 20 days, even if it's a refusal to answer.

To my surprise, and to their credit, the General Secretariat for Forests responded within six days and was very prompt at answering our follow-up questions. However, some very specific inquiries were not adequately addressed, which raised concerns. When we asked how many areas need to be reforested in the country, according to relevant studies, and how many trees would be needed for these reforestations, we received no response. Therefore, our key research questions were certainly ones we couldn't answer with information from the government.

Could this be because the Ministry itself might not know the answer? Or was it simply trying to conceal it in order to focus –as is often the case– on the projects that have already been completed? These are questions that, for now, will certainly remain unanswered.

What the state doesn't answer

Fortunately, among the many people I spoke to for the reporting, there were also many distinguished academics and researchers who tried to provide answers through their studies.

For example, a study by the team of Petros Gannatsas, Professor of Forestry and Forest Ecology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, recorded burned areas from 2021 and 2022 (excluding cases of large fires that received special attention, such as in Northern Evia and Dadia), which needed to be reforested. The study concluded that at least 5.9057 hectares of the burned forest areas from 2021 should be reforested, and 2.6320 hectares for 2022. When we compared this data with what was sent to us by the Ministry of Environment and Energy (e.g., 0.6423 hectares were reforested in 2022), it became clear how many areas seem to be overlooked after the fires.

Furthermore, the study on the reforestation of Northern Evia is publicly available and provides an important insight into how the state manages forests: according to the researchers, who conducted very thorough fieldwork, the areas requiring artificial reforestation amount to 3.3632 hectares and of these, it has been decided to reforest only the public lands, which amount to 0.93838 hectares, less than a third of the total area proclaimed reforestable.

What will happen to private lands, which according to the law can be reforested by the state in case of fire? “Artificial reforestation [...] is only the first of a series of reforestation efforts that we have undertaken. In the very near future, the opening of the public tendering procedure for the implementation of artificial reforestation works for the remaining parts of the fire-stricken area of Northern Evia will follow, according to the rest of the content of the aforementioned study (editor’s note: the study for public forests), which are planned to be done in the best and scientifically correct way, ensuring the success of the reforestation and the protection of biodiversity”, the Ministry responded. In essence, we did not receive any answer as to whether the state plans to proceed with reforestation on non-public lands.

When nature is burning

Beyond the objective difficulties of starting an investigation into forests or searching every possible corner for information on questions that will remain unanswered or ignored by the state, there is also the frustration that comes from the public's response.

How relevant can an investigation into forests be in the heart of winter? Experience shows that not very much. Although through our reports we managed to shed light for the first time on aspects of our forests, such as the underperformance of state-run nurseries and the lack of plants for Northern Evia, or to highlight the state's indifference to greenery and its use solely for political promises, we clearly saw that our investigations were primarily appreciated by those already in the field.

The harsh truth was that the popularity of our investigations among the broader public skyrocketed six months after their publication, when we once again had wildfires in the summer, and everyone on social media was talking about it. In fact, not only did we see that people read our investigations, but due to their widespread sharing on social media, the Ministry found it necessary to issue “clarifications” on the topic. However, once again, we saw that they focused more on promoting the Antinero initiative rather than addressing the issues raised in our February report.

For those of you living in Athens, think about how much easier it used to be to reach a forest. Nowadays, an Athenian must travel many more kilometers to find lush pristine forests, and, of course, to get there, he would have passed through many burned areas that will remind him of the massive destruction. It's easy to blame climate change or wind turbines and bury our heads in the sand when we want to find the deeper causes that have led to this situation. However, we must not forget that it is in our hands to demand accurate and frequent accountability from the authorities, and to seek information that will provide us with answers to all those “whys”, which from time to time, the TV reminds us of as it highlights the increasingly hot summers.