Gabriel Paun doesn’t know how he’s survived this long.

The 47-year-old Romanian environmental defender has been assaulted, stalked, threatened and driven off the road. After years of cataloguing illegal logging in Romania’s national forests, he says he has a bounty on his head.

“I'm not upset or angry or worried. Nothing to complain about,” Paun says with a wry smile. “I can't explain why I have survived so many times. But I'm happy because I can do more.”

There’s an unsettling ease with which Paun describes decades of run-ins with what he calls the “forest mafia” – a collection of rogue loggers that observers say are wreaking havoc on some of the last remnants of Europe’s old-growth forests.

“I'm not fighting only for the trees, but for the entire forest ecosystem, including the thousands of species that live under and above ground,” Paun tells the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “Primary and old-growth forests are of the utmost importance. I have all the reason to dedicate my life and career to them.”

For his efforts to defend the environment in the face of grave danger, Paun has been named a 2024  Champion of the Earth – the United Nations’ highest environmental honour – in the Inspiration and Action category. Paun is one of six laureates in the 2024 cohort. 

“As ecosystems around the world are degraded and destroyed, environmental defenders stand as nature’s truest allies. Yet they continue to endure physical attacks, smear campaigns and other hardships,” says Inger Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director . “Gabriel Paun’s brave, impactful actions make him an inspiration to envrionmental defenders across the globe who are seeking to protect forests and ecosystems from destruction.”

Treefall

Romania is home to two-thirds of Europe’s last remaining old-growth forests, according to the European Union . Those forests are primarily nestled along the Carpathian Mountains. They provide essential ecosystem services, climate regulation and flood control, to millions. They’re also home to some of Europe’s largest populations of big carnivores, including lynx, brown bears and wolves.

Yet forests in the country have been under siege for decades. In 2019, Romania’s Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests, said over half of all logging in Romania was unauthorized. The European Union says the practice is fuelling deforestation.

In 2009, Paun founded the non-government organization Agent Green to expose environmental crimes in Romania. Despite a limited budget and small team, Agent Green says it has helped save tens of thousands of hectares of primary and old-growth forests. In December 2023, it reported that it prevailed in years-long lawsuits against logging in the Domogled-Valea Cernei National Park, effectively protecting over 29,000 hectares of forests.

“The name ‘Agent’ speaks for itself: We stand for investigations,” Paun says. “But we also work with scientists to document particular forests and show the authorities – or the owners, if it's a private one – that it's a precious forest, and it's worth preserving.”

Paun says his organization is dedicated to non-violence. But his opponents don’t always sing from the same hymn sheet.

Bodily harm

On a chilly winter day in 2014, Paun tracked a truck exiting Romania’s oldest national park, the Retezat, loaded with lumber. Paun covertly followed the truck until it arrived at a sawmill. Camera in hand, he approached the factory entrance to document the crime.

In response, one security guard pepper-sprayed him.

In another incident in the Retezat in 2015, Paun says he was attacked and suffered serious injuries to his ribs, head and hand. Footage of the incident has since garnered nearly 150,000 views.

A European Parliament briefing in 2023 expressed “particular concern” after investigations revealed that “cases of violence and murder against whistle-blowers and foresters are surging” in the country.

Globally, over 1,700 environmental defenders from 61 countries were murdered between 2012 and 2021, according to a UNEP report .

“Environmental defenders are in terrible isolation. Our opponents are more or less happy that we are very few, and that makes us very vulnerable,” Paun says.

In the courts

Agent Green says it has filed “hundreds” of lawsuits to prevent illegal logging. The group has brought some of its cases to European institutions in a process Paun terms “a never-ending story.”

Yet Paun remains optimistic that environmental justice will prevail. He’s also extending his work beyond Romania, advocating at international summits and meetings with development agencies.

His latest project is the establishment of a shared peace park in the Carpathians, one of Europe's few truly wild areas at the Ukraine-Romania border.

“For wildlife and all the other species, there are no boundaries. The only boundary exists in our very own minds,” Paun says. “Our vision is also for people to live without borders. So it's a very symbolic project. And I think it's ecological diplomacy at its best.”

Ultimately, Paun says his inspiration comes from the beauty of nature.

“All the threats I've endured mean little or nothing to me,” he says. “I have to keep going because I cannot unlearn what I learned. And I learned that the planet is suffering and needs healing. If I stopped, then I would be morally dead. And to me, moral death is the most painful death of all.”