Having rushed in at full tilt, summer has decided to take a little rest, giving itself over to cool spells and downpours. In gardens, meadows and fields, things are blossoming, ripening, getting ready...

The question we asked almost eight years ago is still relevant, and has become even sharper: “Do our state’s representatives, those who hold power and make decisions, actually stand up for landowners today? Does this advocacy and this concern for people – people who live in Latvia’s regions, far and not so far from Riga – ring out only in speeches from podiums and at monuments, while the actual owner of land and forest is left facing alone (not ‘together with’, but precisely ‘against’!) a cumbersome machinery, not always knowledgeable or professional, often fooled by fine words, incapable of engaging with substance and led on a leash by empty, belligerently foolish activism – a machinery we cannot always proudly call ‘our state administration’?”

Just as relevant, if not more so, is the question: “What matters more in our country – a person who is the owner and master of their own land, or a handful of people’s wish to ‘follow the fashion’ of speaking beautifully (and correctly) and to secure their own personal well-being through other people’s hands, dressing it up as concern for nature (it hardly matters what, so long as it lets them restrict others, forbid this or that, or, put more simply, invent a pretext to conveniently steer their way into the Saeima on the back of voters’ ignorance and incompetence), while actually doing nothing at all?”

To broaden your horizons, we urge you to be sure to watch the film “The Latvian and His Forest”.

Watch the film “The Latvian and His Forest”

The film was produced by the association “Latvijas Mežu sertifikācijas padome” in cooperation with Ansis Pūpols and the studio Nemelo.lv, with support from the Forest Development Fund