On 25 February 2014, the public portal TVNET launched the "Against Forest Destruction" campaign, which included the following articles:
2015 - Latvia's forest area is shrinking;
2016 - The untouchable volume of forest harvesting;
2017 - How much forest is actually left in Latvia?
2018 - Latvia's deforestation, or forest genocide! Big things happen in silence.
All these articles are biased. Their goal is to achieve the highest possible number of views and popularity. They are directly aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the Latvian forestry industry.
One of the authors of these articles is Viesturs Ķerus, a member of the FSC Forest Management Standard development working group, vice-chairman of the VARAM Environmental Advisory Council, a member of the Council of the Latvian Environmental Development Fund, and chairman of the board of the Latvian Ornithological Society.
All of the above articles were published during a period when Latvia was in the world's Top 5 in terms of the percentage of FSC-certified forest areas.
- Ķerus' desire to discredit the forest industry and distort facts manifests regularly:
25.01.2016 In the new Yale University EPI assessment for the forestry sector, we are once again among the worst countries in the world - V. Ķerus has also expressed this view on behalf of the Environmental Advisory Council without any factual explanation.
15.04.2016 I only hope that a peace period will be implemented while there are still some birds left to protect in those forests - in a radio discussion about the peace period for logging, V. Ķerus claims that all birds in Latvia will perish, and that loggers are literally "trampling" through smashed bird eggs...
18.12.2016 Half of state forests lose their certification for environmentally friendly management - we have written about this before: certification is a controlled process, and if a company moves from one type of certificate to another during the recertification process, it cannot be considered that the certificate has been lost.
03.01.2017 The Black Mark has appeared in my local forest again - this is how the marking of logging site boundaries in forest stands on state forest land is commented upon.
All of the above information creates a distorted impression of one of Latvia's most essential national industries; it is deliberate and purposeful sabotage with the intent of obtaining funding for one's own needs - no other rational explanation for these actions can be found.
The development of the FSC Forest Management Standard for Latvia is currently underway with the aim of creating a unified Latvian National Forest Management Standard. FSC requires reaching a compromise between environmental, economic, and social interests, but how is that to be achieved if the standard development working group includes a person who constantly organizes smear campaigns against the Latvian forest industry and misinforms the public?