With their country hobbled by debt and unemployment rampant, impoverished Greeks are increasingly turning to illegal logging as a means of gathering home heating fuel, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This winter "tens of thousands" of trees have been illegally taken from forests outside of the capital, Athens. The country's environment ministry has lodged some 3,000 lawsuits and seized more than 13,000 tons of illegally cut wood. With residents throwing "anything into the fireplace that can be burned," the city of more than 3 million residents now faces a growing smog problem.
Panos Skourlitis, a spokesman for the Syriza political party, which opposes the country's austerity program that has led to higher home fuel heating costs, told the Wall Street Journal that Greeks now must choose "either getting burned by wood stoves, or destroying the forests, or living in a cloud of smog."
