Twelve cases of illegal logging were revealed by Georgia’s Environmental Supervision Department on 1 August,10 in Kakheti and two in Samtskhe-Javakheti.
In a statement, the department said that people had been caught transporting illegally cut wood from hornbeam, beech, and oak trees in Lagodekhi, Gurjaani, Telavi and Sagarejo municipalities in Kakheti and Borjomi and the village of Uraveli in South Georgia.
The department, operating under the Ministry of Environment, has passed the cases on to the courts.
If convicted of transporting wood without proper documentation, offenders first receive a warning, followed by a ₾500 ($200) fine for repeat offences.
According to a report from the Ministry of Environment, 866 cases of environmental damage were identified in June; 815 were classified as administrative and 51 as criminal offenses. Of these, 16% were for illegal logging, and 9% for illegal transportation of timber.
For the whole of 2016, the ministry identified over 10,000 cases of environmental damage; 2,800 of these were related to illegal logging and transportation of timber.
Environmental activist Temur Vekua told Georgian newspaper Rezonansi that forest cover in Georgia has decreased by 25% over the last 25 years.
Rusiko Simonidze, from the Greens Movement of Georgia, told the paper that the forests lost cannot be restored, as the massive amounts of trees cut down over the past 20–30 years were not replaced.
‘The situation is really grave and the state doesn’t deny this. There are some efforts to improve it, but even the greatest efforts won’t be enough, this is how great is the loss is’, she says.
According to a report conducted by Global Forest Watch,around 9,000 hectares of trees were cut down in Georgia from 2001–2015. In the same time period Azerbaijan lost around 7,000 hectares and Armenia 2,000 hectares of forest.
Manganese mining company Magharoeli LLC has filed lawsuits against 30 residents in the village of Shukruti, demanding that the residents pay a total of ₾5.5 million ($2.1 million), as well as restricting their property rights.
The Shukruti residents’ lawyer, Lado Kutateladze, told OC Media that they only found out about the lawsuits on Monday, adding that this latest series of cases aimed to pressure Shukruti residents to end their protest against mining operations under their village.
Demonstrators from Shukruti, who have been protesting for almost six months to raise awareness of the damage caused by manganese mining under their village, have moved their protest to Tbilisi. Police did not allow them to set up their tent in front of the parliament building.
On Wednesday evening, several dozen demonstrators arrived in Tbilisi from the village of Shukruti, west Georgia. They asked the state to pay attention to their problems and their protest.
Residents of Shukruti have bee
A Tongan activist has lashed out at Azerbaijan’s climate record ahead of the COP29 UN climate summit in Baku.
Joseph Zane Sikulu, an activist from the Pacific Basin Climate Movement made the comments in an open letter to the President of COP29, Mukhtar Babayev, a former oil executive at SOCAR.
In the letter, Sikulu introduced himself as a native Tongan, noting that Babayev recently visited the islands of Tonga to participate in the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum.
‘You visited my home island la
On Sunday, three protesters from the village of Shukruti sewed their lips shut in an attempt to attract attention to their protest against the damage manganese mining is causing to their homes. This latest action follows more than five months of continuous protest by local residents.
Sunday morning was gloomy in the protest tent. People had been gathering since the early hours, knowing that some of the protesters had made the decision to take the extreme measure of sewing their lips shut.
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Twelve cases of illegal logging were revealed by Georgia’s Environmental Supervision Department on 1 August, 10 in 
