An exhibition that comes up with a narrative about the Bulgarian old-growth forests and their animal inhabitants reveals the natural wealth in the Bulgarian lands – a world however which might go extinct. At the peak of environmental protests against the decision of the government to facilitate construction on 48 percent of the Pirin Mountain area, animal, floral and natural science illustrators have used the language of art to raise the social cause of safeguarding wild animals and their habitats and making them worthy for all of us.

“Old-growth forests are facing hard times as economic interests stand against environmental protection and I am dismayed to see how in the 21^st Century we have gone back to the Neanderthal Era when the widespread view was that nature was created to be our servant.” With these words Prof. Nikolay Spasov, Director of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), opened the exhibition in the museum’s halls in Sofia adding that along with beauty there is also anxiety in the air. “The message though is clear – virgin forests must survive”, he also said.

Huge posters with cut trees meet visitors of the exhibition but the sense of an apocalypse dissolves in the warmth that radiates from the images of animals and plants, birds and insects – popular species but also mysterious denizens of the wild forest world.

Seventeen artists united at the Society of Animal, Floral and Scientific Illustrators (SAFSI)present in water-colors, prints and oil paintings their insights into living nature.

„We decided to create a small society to promote this kind of art, as well as to address a few pressing issues in environmental protection”, artistDenitsa Peneva tells us. “Our work is related to wild nature and of course, our priority is to safeguard it. It goes without saying, we were originally attracted by its unsurpassed beauty but consequently, we adopted the problems of environmentalists as our own cause, because we do have a lot in common. Our latest cause is Pirin – we do not oppose the development of tourism but we do not like what the town of Bansko has turned into and we do not want this kind of future for Bulgarian skiing and for such important habitats as Pirin National Park.”

Zoologist Assen Ignatov explains that one of the exhibition’s objectives is to educate people about the vulnerability of old-growth forests when faced with any kind of human activity. The extinction of even a single species in a virgin forest may upset the balance and the whole forest might eventually disappear, he says. Bulgaria has few old-growth forests – in Rila, Pirin, the Western Rhodopes, the Central Balkan Range and Strandzha but there is no control and people go there driving cars and АТV for indiscriminate felling, poaching and picking protected flowers. And it now pretty clear that the ancient trees in Pirin are at stake, Assen Ignatov claims.

„In Pirin felling and cable cars should have been banned long ago. By building the first cable car the law was flagrantly violated and now there are plans to extend it or even build a new one. However, we all know what happened when despite bans loads of old-growth trees were cut – and in the spring that followed nature took a fierce revenge on Bansko causing appalling damage and flooding”, the zoologist recalls.

The pressure on environmental groups and civil society is getting stronger by the day, says in turn Georgi Pchelarov, President of SAFSI.

“Laws are broken blatantly and indiscriminately under false pretexts”, he adds. “Nature parks are now at stake, as greedy hands reach out to destroy virgin forests. The last remnants of Magna Silva Bulgarorum – the great forest of Bulgarians, are now under threat and our exhibition aims to show what we are going to lose if this madness goes on: because after the chainsaws and the collapsed forest giants come floods, muddy landslides and concrete, and ultimately darkness.”

English Daniela Konstantinova