Hotel Overbuilding in Bulgaria Raising Some Environmental Eyebrows

Overbuilding of Bulgaria’s resorts is definitely putting the country’s nature reserves in harm’s ways, environmental advocates from the World Wide Fund (WWF) were quoted as saying to Reuters news agency.

“Rampant corruption and weak public administration” enabled over-construction, threatening a number of rare and endangered bird and plant species.

In February 2007 Bulgaria approved a list of areas to be included in the European environmental network Natura 2000. The areas total one fifth of the country’s territory.

The list of areas provoked criticism from local businesses and municipalities, fearing they might lose tourism revenue and investment opportunities. Ecologists protest saying that many areas which should be protected were excluded from the network.

Bulgaria had to “rein in construction” to protect its nature as it had “some of the most precious nature zones in Europe,” WWF said in a letter to local authorities.