Latvia needs an ambitious goal that would surprise the world. Why not turn the country (70-75% of its territory) into one vast nature reserve, thereby ending the arguments between nature lovers and «greedy» foresters and farmers, both directly and indirectly within Latvian and European Union institutions, and rendering the essentially empty disputes over the designation of new protected areas even more pointless?

The entire progressive world is passionate about nature conservation and advocates for limiting climate change—in a word, for a greener lifestyle that is as friendly as possible to nature itself.
Latvia cannot and MUST NOT fall behind this global trend, or—pardon the expression—this latest fashion. We urgently need an action plan on what to do and how to do it so that our country is noticed not just by a few, but by all of progressive humanity. And here, the activities of local activists claiming that certain things should not be cut or need not be cut will not be enough. We need new, fresh ideas that would take one's breath away upon implementation and make Latvia a model for the whole world.
Latvia is already one of those countries in the world that is successfully «liberating» itself from nature’s greatest pest—humanity. If the data published by media scribes is to be believed, even though Latvia was not affected by warfare, natural disasters, or technological catastrophes in the early nineties, the population «melted away» just as it does in wartime. In total, over the last 27 years, this territory has lost as many, if not more, people than it did during the First World War—700,000. The figures are shocking. It is no wonder that, according to UN data (2.384 million in 2000 vs. 1.95 million in 2017), Latvia is one of the leaders in «losing» its population—a decline of 18.22%. It can be concluded that Lithuania (3.502 million in 2000 vs. 2.890 million in 2017) has followed a similar path, as its decline is 17.46%, while Estonia (1.334 million in 2000 vs. 1.309 million in 2017) has taken a different path, with a population decline of only 6.4%. Of course, when calculated in absolute numbers, the loss of human capital compared to the 3.3 million lost in Russia, for instance, is not huge, but in percentage terms against the total population, it is impressive. UN estimates also show that the population in Latvia will continue to decline, reaching only about 1.6 million by 2050. If the journalists are right, then Latvia is already on the right track.

Seeing this picture, defenders of living nature should at least applaud and award all kinds of orders, medals, diplomas, and every other form of gratitude to Latvia's leaders and the heads of political parties. BUT instead, we hear about the greedy forest owners who wanted to «take away» the exceptional status of pine trees in the Baltic Sea coastal strip from 300m to 5 km. The friends of nature not only protected the exceptional status of pine trees in this zone (clear-felling up to 0.2ha), unlike spruce and birch stands where the maximum permitted clear-felling size is up to 2 ha, but even managed to get foresters themselves to «give up» on further «pushing» this idea. A victory. Undeniably a victory and proof of what nature lovers can achieve by working as a united front. Let those forest owners live quietly and not «cough» too much, because as the saying goes: if you want too much, you will get too little.
Last year’s unnaturally wet autumn and the end of the year also «pushed» timber prices to cosmic heights, but in many forests, it was impossible to materialize the acquired felling permits precisely because of the wet conditions, and the greedy forest owners rushed to clear-cut huge strips kilometers, and perhaps even tens of kilometers, long along the roads. As a result, a person traveling by car from point A to point B gets the feeling: they’ve cut everything down, and these feelings of theirs are placed in all sorts of media. City dwellers whose ties to the countryside have already «broken» feel indignation—the appearance is terrible, good mushroom or berry spots have been ruined, and quiet ideas are even being voiced about banning forest felling along roads. It truly seems that these activities have caused Latvia huge harm, and the texts of some scientists regarding their findings that forest areas in this territory have not only grown over the last 30 years but also over the last 70-80 years are not worth considering. One can smirk and ask these «know-it-alls» to name five more countries in the world where forest areas have doubled in the last, say, 50 years.

We do have room to grow in this field, and in principle, we can certainly turn those 48% that are currently not forest area into forest, and in 20-30 years we will be able to proudly say that Latvia is a land where forests cover, let's say, 70% of the entire territory. And for happiness to be complete, and so that no one could threaten our victory in the «afforestation championship», it wouldn't hurt to count all forest stands older than, say, 10 years as protected. Or better yet—grant them nature reserve status, and to completely kill off the desire for all sorts of greedy little landowners to wander around these forests with a saw or an axe, declare them a reserve. Meanwhile, for those people who remain living in the reserve, we could abolish property tax and, at the same time, to ensure no harm is done to nature, allow them to carry out economic activity using ancestral methods. This would certainly be noticed and noted by all of progressive humanity, and our state leaders could receive particularly firm handshakes and hearty praise from the very wisest nature defenders on a global scale. And what could be better than such recognition. We could even provide consultations to potential followers of this path, not just on how to relatively quickly and without carrying a gun get rid of the people unfriendly to nature, but also how to turn almost the entire country into a paradise—a reserve. After all, foreign tourists would also have something to see; if Asian and African countries take white travelers to places where people live according to ancestral methods and recipes, then why wouldn't they want to see how that is? And perhaps for a small but fair fee, foreign tourists could try for themselves how to work and obtain food using ancestral methods. And if those tourists, for whom wood, and even more so a little bird, a fly, or a worm, is exotic and at the same time a huge natural treasure, come to us in droves, then we can finally end the talk about some lack of investments and a shortfall in the state treasury for hospitals, roads, and who knows what else. Latvia as a reserve—a unique experiment on a global scale, and everyone will be happy, except, of course, the landowners. You will say—this is an unrealistic idea and I must have banged my head in a doorway, but who predicted that the area of forest-covered lands would reach 52%, when it was once only 25-27%? You just need to want it. And there is no need to whine about some concerns regarding lost jobs in the logging or sawmill business. We don't need the money of nature-wreckers, just as we don't need the money of non-residents in Latvia, and the less of it there is, the better for everyone.