Eviction of Ferrarisbos Forest Occupation Wilrijk, Antwerp, Belgium

At 7am on Tues­day 3rd of Sep­tem­ber indi­vid­u­als occu­py­ing a wrong­ly zoned Far­raris for­est in Wilrijk were wok­en by the sound of chain­saws. Break­ing the news to all that the for­est was being evict­ed. The first arrest of an indi­vid­ual in a tent on the ground, fol­lowed swift­ly: the tent was unzipped and the occu­pant ordered out although was not informed of their arrest or their rights. A cher­ry pick­er was used to gain access to the two plat­forms. One indi­vid­ual was lift­ed into the cher­ry pick­er and arrest­ed. Anoth­er indi­vid­ual was locked on, and a cut­ting team was used to break the lock on, remove the per­son and arrest them. A fourth indi­vid­ual, in a bed spi­ral (hang­ing tree­house) the tree was climbed and the indi­vid­ual removed and arrest­ed. The whole process took 2–3hrs, with­in 5hrs the for­est had been cut.

Local sup­port­ers and press were at first not allowed through to out­side the for­est. After some­time they man­aged to make their way through. Some locals chose to sar­cas­ti­cal­ly applaud as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Essers went past. This result­ed in 3 indi­vid­u­als being admin­is­tra­tive­ly arrest­ed*.

Essers is the com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for the cut­ting of this for­est. Want­i­ng to build ware­house there, at present there is no known client for this ware­house as the pre­vi­ous prospec­tive ten­ant pulled out of the con­tract.
With­in Bel­gium there is zon­ing of land — land is des­ig­nat­ed for a par­tic­u­lar use. This is out of date and there­fore not accu­rate. Where for­est (as in this case) is zoned as indus­tri­al land it is very easy to acquire the nec­es­sary per­mits required to fell the for­est.
Fer­raris­bos for­est is land that in 1771 whilst Fer­raris was sur­vey­ing and map­ping Bel­gium was found to be for­est. This means the for­est that was felled 03/09/13 was over 250 years old.
Flan­ders (region with­in Bel­gium) has one of the low­est per­cent­ages of remain­ing wood­land in the EU with 8% of wood­lands remain­ing, 20% is con­sid­ered a “healthy” min­i­mum.
The for­est felled 03/09/13 was an impor­tant breed­ing habi­tat for over 20 bird species includ­ing wood­peck­ers. Also the for­est was the sum­mer home and hunt­ing ground to many bats pos­si­bly includ­ing endan­gered and pro­tect­ed species, and groups of red squir­rels. A Bel­gian Gov­ern­ment Agency advised that if felling was to take place it should hap­pen between the 15th of Sep­tem­ber and the 15th of Octo­ber or dur­ing the spring to ensure min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to the ani­mals liv­ing there.

There was a total of 7 arrests through­out the day, 4 of occu­piers of the for­est and 3 local sup­port­ers. All the arrests were admin­is­tra­tive*.
Of the occu­piers the first was quick­ly released due to hav­ing their pass­port with them. 2 were released after fin­ger­prints and pho­tos were tak­en. The one remain­ing occu­pi­er spoke no dutch and police refused to speak more than lim­it­ed Eng­lish to them, refused to pro­vide food and then informed them they would be tak­en to for­eign deten­tion at some point (between in 5 min­utes and 2 days). After becom­ing dis­tressed the indi­vid­ual gave their name and was then released after being dri­ven to a small street in Antwerp with no mon­ey, no idea of their loca­tion and no means of con­tact­ing any­one.

The 3 locals arrest­ed dur­ing the evic­tion of the for­est all chose to give their IDs result­ing in a short deten­tion for 2 of them. 1 was tak­en to prison, being told this would be for 12 months, after 5 hours they were released and put on tag for 3 months. It is unclear why and how this has hap­pened.

Fur­ther Action
Peo­ple from the Occu­pa­tion of the For­est have asked for sol­i­dar­i­ty demos out­side Bel­gian Embassies against the cut­ting of wrong­ly zoned forests.
Short­ly there will also be fur­ther infor­ma­tion for com­mu­ni­ca­tions block­ades.

*Admin­is­tra­tive Arrest is where an indi­vid­ual is arrest­ed for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, this can last up to 12hrs if the indi­vid­ual choos­es to give their name or has ID on them. The arrest can last up to 24hrs if no name is giv­en.

http://groenoord.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/kroniek-van-een-aangekondigde-ontbossing/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferraris_map

steungroep.groenoord@gmail.com
www.groenoord.be