One chilly March morning, Aurelija Stancikiene discovered a candle and a bunch of yellow flowers at her doorstep. It took no time at all for her to get the message: In Lithuania, candles and yellow flowers are items commonly left as graveside memorials. Stancikiene, amother of five and director of Curonian Spit National Park, receives several types of threats on a regular basis these days, but an allusive death threat is something new. The fear, uncertainty and enduring tension of the past two years remind Stancikiene and her family of the early ‘90s, when Lithuania was shaking off its Soviet chains and people felt that their fists offered the best sort of protection.

SPLIT ON THE SPIT: Commercial interests, government officials and environmentalists have been facing off for more than a decade over building rights on the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

“I think back to our life in Nida, with my wife walking the tightrope as head of the national park,” says Dalius Stancikas, Aurelija’s husband. “We used to tell ourselves: ‘We have to withstand this.’When asked why we’re doing this, we answer: ‘So that there is rule of law in this country, not the rule of corruption.’”

Beating the system TheCuronian Spit is a 98 kilometre-long narrow, curved sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. A 52-kilometre stretch of the spit belongs to Lithuania. The current situation involving Curonian Spit National Park is best described as a war between environmentalists, local authorities and those with commercial interests in a protected seaside resort. The park, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, is popular with tourists and revered by locals, and the fight over rights to build on the spit has been going on for more than a decade.

Most of the building investments are Lithuanian but not local in origin. The builder/investor with the highest public profile is former international basketball star Arvydas Sabonis. Sabonio klubas ir partneriai, the star athlete’s co-owned company, has already been ordered by the court to demolish a dozen holiday homes built on park property that were not authorised within terms of the buildng permit that had been granted to the company.

The local Neringa City Council is involved in roughly 40 separate investigations related to the alleged issuing of illegal construction permits. With violators determined to complicate matters, many of these cases have been protracted beyond their due date. And while Lithuania’s Constitutional Court no longer debates the legal status of the protected area, the local court system has established guilt in several instances, which may lead to a first wave of property demolitions. Officials responsible for granting illegal permits are nonetheless escaping prosecution, either because they no longer work for the city council or because they are benifiting directly from the fact that their case has never surfaced.

Protecting whom from what?
Despite some long-awaited victories, Stancikiene receives few accolades or pats on the back for her efforts. Instead, she and Director of the National Authority for Protected Areas Ruta Baskyte have been often rebuked bymembers of parliament and ministry officials for standing “too firmly” for the environment.

“I am constantly asked to explain why I’ve been adhering to the law,” Baskyte commented on the mounting political pressure she faces. “No matter what my reason for visiting Parliament, the question of construction in the protected areas always comes up. But they don’t take my reasoning on principle for an answer.”

The most vocal critics are not only those who were refused construction permits, but local authorities, politicians and members of Lithuania’s Environment Protection Committee. In March, newly appointed Environment Minister Arturas Paulauskas quickly pledged to deal with illegal construction in protected areas; but one of his first moves was to initiate an audit of the institution fighting the construction in the first place—the park administration.

“My stance is very clear,” Paulauskas explained. “These areas are to be protected not from people, but for people. My job as minister is to ensure that park administration and local authorities are working to protect the public interest.”

A special commission investigated the work of the park administration carried out under Stancikiene, and announced the discovery of property management violations. But copies of ministerial documents obtained by the media soon afterward revealed nothing whatsoever to justify such claims. Prosecutors, meanwhile, are requesting court orders to demolish numerous illegally built restaurants, holiday houses and other construction projects in the park. This would allow builders to sue the authorities who issued permits—and claims could be worth hundreds of thousands of euros in compensation. Several businessmen, including Sabonis’ company, have asked for some kind of ‘truce’ in order to avoid making payouts.
But Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas then outraged both the public and President Valdas Adamkus with the following statement: “There are two alternatives—proceeding with the cases according to the law, or seeking peace agreements. Lawyers, however, think [peace agreements] will set a bad precedent.”

The president’s spokesperson responded: “Public interestmust always come first, and it would be incomprehensible to end these scandalous cases with peace agreements, or because of time limitations.”

Waves of protest
 A fresh wave of anonymously filed complaints against the park administration coincides with the administration’s recent refusal to grant a number of building permits. According to Baskyte, one of those refused permission to build a restaurant in the park was the environment minister’s former adviser and fellow party member, Rolandas Zujevas. Zujevas is linked to another social liberal, Gediminas Jakavonis, deputy chief of the Environment Protection Committee. Environment protection officers have also recently ordered Zujevas to remove his trailer home, which is parked illegally on the bank of the Curonian Lagoon in Juodkrante. But he refuses to do so, and the unit continues to illegally barricade public access to the water.
Both Zujevas and Jakavonis were among those protesting at the beginning of March against the park administration. The protest was advertised on the Neringa City Council website, and called on local residents and fishermen to voice their discontent with park officials for “destroying local tourism and the fishing industry,” and for putting nature first by turning the area into a “[US] Indian reservation.” They also publicly demanded that towns in the area be “exempted” from the protected zone, and to apply protected status only to the park dunes, ignoring that UNESCO’s designation applies to the entire Curonian Spit area.

Another protest supporter, city council member and local restaurant owner Irma Baltrusaitiene, blames the park authorities for making it “impossible to plan any entertainment” for tourists who have come to expect “something new” when they visit the Curonian Spit. Baltrusaitiene apparently has ulteriormotives, as well. It was recently reported that she had been given illegal permission to rebuild a number of guesthouses in the protected area. Her case is pending in court.

“One wonders why these protests and complaints [against the park authority] are coming at this particular time—with the arrival of the new minister—and why those protesting are the same people who were either refused construction permits or otherwise ended up in court,” Stancikiene observed. “Also among those complaining is a former national park officer who turned a suspiciously blind eye toward illegal building, although it was his very job to prevent that kind of thing.”

Defending the defenders
 “Essentially, this is an attack against all protected areas in Lithuania, but the land and real estate business has made so many people oblivious to this,” said ecologist Erlandas Paplauskis, who has been working in one of the country’s protected areas for more than a decade, and voiced his feelings at an alternative protest at the Environment Ministry in Vilnius that was organised in support of Baskyte and Stancikiene. “Curonian Spit epitomises just what is happening in the rest of the country, but not every park administration has people courageous enough to speak up andmake these criminal [personal] attacks public.”
Approximately 100 people attended the demonstration in the Lithuanian capital to criticise the new environment minister. Those that gathered professed their willingness to “defend those defending the law,” and urged that physical threats, anonymous letters and public insults against the park authorities should not be tolerated.

“By not condemning his party colleague [Jakavonis], EnvironmentMinister Paulauskas is defending instead thosewho are openly committing crimes and terrorizing those who are adhering to the law,” concluded another Vilnius protester, filmmaker Vytautas Damasevicius, who also represents the Alternative Commission for Heritage Protection. However gloomy the present outlook, optimistic environmentalists point to the one main difference between the lawless ‘90s and today: Lithuania is now a member of the European Union, and this provides some hope that the international community and international courts won’t avert their eyes while Lithuania’s natural treasures are being destroyed; that they won’t allow corruption to prevail. It’s time to start filing lawsuits.