Editorial

Foresta 2000 is an exciting afforestation project which is being carried out jointly by Din l-Art Helwa, BirdLife Malta and the Parks Department of the Ministry of Rural Affairs and the Environment. Its objective is to establish a Mediterranean woodland on the ridge bounded by the road under the Red Tower, the Din l-Art Helwa property which also offers the visitor centre for Foresta 2000, to Ic-Cumnija on the coast, and from the bird sanctuary at Ghadira to the Red Tower.

The woodland was to be established over a number of years, with a bush-type terrain with shrubs, such as Mediterranean buckthorn, myrtle and lentisk, and trees, such as Aleppo pine. A number of holm oaks were to be planted in the shade of existing trimmed blue wattle (acacia) found on site. These would eventually form the basis of the forest, which would be unlike the single species, managed forests found abroad, but would be multi-species with the type of trees and landscape changing across the whole ridge - meadows, thick maquis, and woodland composed of pines and oak trees - located in the typical Maltese cultural landscape of Marfa Ridge for the recreation and enjoyment of Maltese and visitors alike.

Last May, in an act of vengeful vandalism, committed by people as yet unknown - fingers can, and have, been pointed but in a country where the rule of rule is practised, one ought to wait until investigations and then justice take their course - 3,000 trees and shrubs were destroyed.

In the words of the outstandingly dedicated and courageous forest ranger in charge of Foresta 2000, Ray Vella, who just recently was slightly injured in the face after being shot by an unknown person carrying a shotgun, "Shrubs had been beaten down with hoes; trees sawed off. This was a malicious and methodical attack on 65 tumoli of land which, in financial terms, set the project back some Lm30,000. This was money donated by the public at large, by schools (one school had planted 120 trees), by the Corpo Forestale dello Stato, by BirdLife Malta and from tax payers' money".

The public reaction to this outrage was immediate. Within a short period, well over Lm45,000 had been collected in public donations, with leading banks and commercial firms in Malta generously showing the way.

The Foresta 2000 project, which was conceived by BirdLife as their gift to Malta to celebrate the new millennium, will live on. Although the outrageous damage of five months ago has set the project back by three years, this weekend, with many volunteers descending on the Foresta 2000 site to plant 9,000 trees and shrubs to replace, three-fold, those mindlessly destroyed or damaged, a new injection of commitment to afforestation in Malta will be achieved.

Just as the vicious act of vandalism perpetrated at Mnajdra six years ago galvanised public opinion and the government into doing something to save our cultural heritage, so the wanton destruction at Foresta 2000 may be seen as a turning point in public perceptions. Not only to support whole-heartedly the government's worthy efforts at "greening" Malta through its afforestation projects and 34U campaigns, but also in sending an unmistakable message to that "underclass" in our society which thinks it has a monopoly over the Maltese landscape that safeguarding the environment for public enjoyment must at all times prevail. The government must ram that message home by pursuing and developing its afforestation programme and, most importantly, by implementing the rule of law with greater commitment.