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Former basketball player Linas Kleiza was caught in the police half a year ago, driving an unregistered ATV on the road near Nemenčinė.
And in autumn, SUV competitions were held in the Karšuva Forest, Tauragė District, Viešvilė Nature Reserve. Environmentalists rumbled in the high swamp when they saw felled trees, many deep furrows in the area, where a person is prohibited from even setting foot.
Formerly overgrown forest roads near Vilnius were also turned into ditches for ATV tires.
Foresters have posted signs announcing the responsibility of drivers at the entrances to the Trakai Vokė forests in Vilnius, but they admit that these signs do not save much. Fines of € 20-50 for illegal logging or € 140-300 for destruction of forest cover do not deter offenders.
“Some prevention is information posters, fines, but violators do not deter it,” says Laimonas Daukša, Trakai forest protection specialist.
So politicians are already considering increasing fines by tenfold and even more for driving motor vehicles in forbidden places in the woods, for driving on the forest floor.
“The fines seem ridiculous, you pay a fine of 20 euros and it is like a license to drive off the road, go through the forest, do whatever you want, etc.”, says the Social Democrat Linas Jonauskas, a member of the Seimas.
A politician offers a fine of 500 to 1,500 euros for driving a vehicle through the forest where it is forbidden to do so. A repeated offense would entail a fine of between € 1,500 and € 3,000 with confiscation of the vehicle. Four-wheelers who see such a project grab their heads and call it inappropriate.
“It just came to our attention then. These are inappropriate, unwise fines”, – the club director Alytus ATV “Grizliai” is convinced by Rimantas Turauskas.
According to the Minister of the Environment, fines of up to 3,000. And the seizure of the vehicle is too severe as it will threaten not only aggressive ATV drivers but also peaceful mushroom pickers.
“I don’t want to ruin Dzūkija and deprive all cars of mushrooms. A little over-order, almost all mushrooms could be confiscated from the car,” explains Environment Minister Simonas Gentvilas.
ATV drivers are outraged that they are already being discriminated against, with officials allegedly catching and punishing them for driving in the forest, while mushroom and berry pickers arriving by car are paying with warnings. ATV drivers are also calling on the government to facilitate the registration in Lithuania of ATVs imported from non-EU countries that may not meet European pollution and safety requirements. But members of the government say they are currently in bigger trouble.
“There is no registration system, it is not possible to register the vehicles we drive,” says Rimantas Turauskas, director of the Alytus ATV “Grizliai” club.
This semester, only 15 offenders were fined for driving motorized vehicles off forest roads and damaging the forest floor, and four of them, four-wheelers, are said to be unaware of the rangers. By the way, politicians are considering not only increasing fines for damage to nature, but also tenfold to 600 euros, increasing the current fine of 60-120 euros for driving without license plates.
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