The downtown of the Bulgarian sea capital and top tourist destination, the city of Varna, has been severely mutilated during the holidays as the trees in the centrally located Sevastopol garden have been pruned and many have been cut down.

The "sanitary cutting" of the trees, as the Varna Municipality Administration has allegedly called it, in the emblematic park in downtown Varna started on May 1, Labor Day.

It was immediately countered by a spontaneous civic protest on May 2 when about 2000 residents of Varna signed a petition against the seemingly haphazard destruction of the Sevastopol garden.

The motives for the cutting down of the trees in the center of the city are still unclear.

According to the statements from the technical crew, who pruned the trees, the purpose was to remove dry and old trees by allowing offshoots to grow, and by using the pruned two-meter high tree trunks for woodcarving.

According to unofficial information, however, the park has been destroyed so that a parking lot or some sort of an expensive building could be constructed in its place, and the whole activity is related to certain business interests.

The Zelena Varna ("Green Varna") environmental association is organizing another protest on Wednesday morning before the building of Varna Municipality.

The statement of the association's website says that the timing of the sanitary action in the Sevastopol garden during the non-working days between May 1 and May 6 was very suspicious.

Zelena Varna is expecting information from the Municipal Administration regarding the motives for the cutting of the trees, and its plans for the Sevastopol garden.

The environmentalists have placed black bands on the trunks of the pruned trees and signs reading "They mutilated me!"

The Sevastopol garden is located only a two-minute walk away from the building of the Municipal Administration, and a three-minute walk from the Sea Garden and the Black Sea coast.

Paradoxically, the affair with the cutting down of the trees in downtown Varna coincides with the visit of the MEP David Hammerstein, who declared that the environmental violations in Bulgaria were shocking.

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