The first day of the meeting of PAN Parks in Bulgaria, held here for first time, ironically coincided with the first day of the construction at Rila Mountain connected to expanding the existing Borovets winter resort into Super Borovets. Welcoming charity bicycle riders in Borovets on October 7, the deputy mayor of Samokov municipality proudly announced the beginning of the construction.

Paradoxically, the Protected Area Network of Parks (PAN Parks) awarded Rila National Park with the prize given to parks that do well in preserving their natural heritage. However, local environmentalists do not agree that this is the case with Rila.

The question that comes to mind here is how the Bulgarian State Agency for Tourism (SAT) succeeded in convincing the PAN Parks management that the Bulgarian Government is supporting ecological tourism, and why the SAT did so. Inviting the PAN Parks management to Bulgaria would not be the best idea, as representatives would be able to see the harmful construction development. But they did not.

During the conference, they were given the opportunity to choose from among four day trips as different eco-tourism destinations in Rila region. Six eco walking paths are set in the vicinity of Belitsa; two of them are in the region of Dobursko. Rila Monastery Nature Park was also presented to the conference participants. However, the plans for Super Borovets or Panichishte-Ezerata-Kabul, also being built in Rila National Park, remained undisclosed.

Back in Sofia, the environmental activists were also not taking a week off. On October 9, the coalition To Sustain the Nature in Bulgaria opened a photo exhibition in the gardens in front of Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia. Visitors were free to bring their own pictures, showing their personal relationship with Rila, the ways in which they have known and loved the mountain. Video footage was shown as well, and the exhibition was placed and left in the garden to remind residents that while they walk or talk, work or have fun, the labourers in Rila are turning earth, and every hour is worthwhile for the mountain, because the old evergreen trees are falling every minute under the pressure of money.

What if all this money were invested in environmentally friendly tourism? How long does it take to re-educate a population? Or, what does it take to lay out ski pistes in places where no trees have grown? Some questions keep on stumbling into my head.

On October 11, The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate (15 Lyuben Karavelov Str, Sofia) opened an exhibition called Concrete Does Not Blossom. It includes the "chronology of the green revolt". This exhibition presents fragments and prints of this newest civil movement in Bulgaria and is an attempt to understand its causes, motivation and character, as the organisers described it. It is worth seeing because one can observe and listen to video art, graffiti art, documentaries and sounds from the protest for saving Irakli, Strandja and Rila nature areas and parks, which, expectedly or not, have become an inseparable part of our daily grind. The exhibition is on until October 19.

For comments, ideas or suggestions on the Eco Echo column, please e-mail to press@sofiaecho.com