Conservationists denounce damage at Larnaca park

By Robert Morgan

The Larnaca Salt Lake Wetland Protection Group on Friday denounced illegal construction in the nearby Natura 2000-protected Pattichio Park, calling on the forestry department to “enforce the law” and halt all ongoing projects.

The group made an official complaint after a contractor cut down and uprooted trees and bushes within the park, which is inside the Cypriot Natura 2000 network.

It has expressed concern over the project before. In February, it said the plan to change the park needed “urgent review” and called it “yet another environmental blunder”.

The group asked the forestry department in a published letter to tell the public exactly how it would “immediately terminate” the works, as well as how it would record the damages and fully restore the forest there to the fullest extent possible.

It also asked the department to explain how it ever consented to “extra projects in Pattichio Park” and to say whether the law and subsequent penalties would be properly imposed on Larnaca Municipality and the contractor behind the damage now done.

The conservation group said that for “unspecified reasons” the environmental department and related agencies gave their consent “under the guise of ‘development’” for the municipality “to cut down trees and bushes, level whole areas, build a three-story restaurant [and] pave a parking lot in the only green lung of the city”.