New Law for Old Trees in Romania: lessons and opportunities

Large Old Trees (LOT) are keystone ecological structures and have high cultural and economic importance. Still, LOT are only exceptionally targeted specifically by National Laws and are absent from powerful nature conservation policies (e.g., the Natura 2000 protected area policies of the European Union). Romania recently adopted a Law for its LOT. As persons who contributed to the scientific premisses and the first draft of this Law as well as in the advocacy for Romanian LOT, we present the Law (its weaknesses and opportunities) and provide insights into encourage other countries for adopting the Law specifically for LOT.


| INTRODUCTION
Large old trees (LOT) are keystone ecological structures (Lindenmayer & Laurance, 2016;Piovesan et al., 2022) and their environmental (Sist et al., 2014), socio-cultural (Blicharska & Mikusi nski, 2014), evolutionary and economic values are increasingly recognized (Cannon et al., 2022).Within various European countries LOT are protected as part of broader regulations for nature conservation or for natural monuments (e.g., Poland i and Switzerland ii ).In other countries, nongovernmental institutions work in close collaboration with Governamental structures for protecting specific LOT (e.g., the "Tree Foundation" in the Netherlands iii , National Contest "Arbre de l'année" in France iv , and the "Félix Rodriguez de la Fuente Foundation" in Spain v ).Nevertheless, the local protection of specific LOT happens in every European country under the various acts of local municipalities.Finally, initiatives to inventory, popularize LOT, including through open access data about trees are emerging across Europe (e.g., Germany vi , France vii , Sweden viii , UK ix , Hungary x , Romania xi , or the international "Monumental Trees" database xii ), and academic papers regarding the importance of LOT are recently published in influential journals (see references).
Although there are experiences with rules enacted by local government to protect particular trees, national acts specifically developed for LOT are rare within the European Union (EU).This situation is rather unusual given the growing initiatives for understanding, popularizing, and protecting LOT, the academic calls for developing national and international policies for LOT (e.g., Lindenmayer et al. 2014), and the availability of knowledge and practice related to stakeholder involvement for achieving common vision and targets (Hossu et al., 2017;Norstro et al., 2018).The EU also has a nature conservation strategy (the Natura 2000 protected areas xiii ), but LOT are ignored from this although LOT are habitats for several protected species (e.g., saproxylic insects Jonsell, 2012).
Since April 2023 Romania has a Law specifically developed to protect its LOT (Law 97/2023 for protecting Remarkable Trees).The emergence of this Law is remarkable in itself, since Romania is still less developed regarding citizen implication for nature conservation (Loos et al., 2015), the advocacy and research activities for LOT are relatively recent (Figure 1) and the natural resource governance is still strongly sectorial (Hossu et al., 2017) and scientific research is under-funded.The authors of this piece contributed to the Law by researching LOT (Hartel et al., 2018), by making strong advocacy for LOT in Romania and beyond, by being involved in the creation, development, and running of the Remarkable Trees of Romania (RToR) site xiv and by contributing to the first draft of the Law.

| THE LAW: ITS PROMISES DESPITE ITS LIMITED CHARACTER
The Law for Remarkable Trees of Romania defines remarkable trees as trees outside the Forests that should have at least one of these criteria: age (at least 160 years), a taxon-specific minimum trunk circumference, and the existence of local legends and stories proving its heritage value(s).The extraction of LOT according to the Law is allowed only if the tree is completely dried and/or the tree is uprooted and its removal is not in other ways forbidden.According to the Law, "in term of 30 days from the date of entry into force [of the Law] the application rules will be elaborated and published, by common order of the Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forests, the Minister of Development, Public works and Administration and the Minister Agriculture and Rural development."Also, within 60 days from the adoption of the The events that resulted in the emergence of the Romanian Law for protecting remarkable trees.Despite its weaknesses, the Law has the potential for leveraging educational, advocacy, research, and conservation projects.On the right side, the images show three remarkable oaks (with at least 450 cm girths) in open and forest landscapes.According to the Law, however, the tree from the forest is not protected.
Law, a "Catalogue of remarkable trees" should be developed; the trees listed in this catalog can be used by landowners to request financial compensation (however, the Law do not detail this mechanism).The forestry authority is legally responsible for running the catalog and to make decisions regarding the protected LOT.Cutting LOT as illegal activity will be sanctioned with 5000-15,000 RON (cca 1000 to 3000 EUR).In the time of the revision of this article (3 months after the adoption of the law), none of the above measures were fulfilled, yet remarkable trees were mentioned in the proposal of the new forest act, currently in the public consultation process.
The Law has a main drawback: it excludes the LOT's from the Romanian forests.While the initial proposal was inclusive for every LOT (authors' personal contribution), the Governement endorsed the initiative only after the exclusion of LOT growing in forests (Figure 1), while No clear arguments for excluding forest LOT's were provided xv .Therefore, according to the current Law, for example, an oak tree of at least 450 cm girth on the pasture is protected as Remarkable Tree but one of the same size from the forest is not (Figure 1).Policies that excludes forest LOT are also in other countries such as Switzerland xvi .We believe that despite the abovementioned limitation the most genuine beneficiaries of the Law will be the civil society and local initiatives to protect LOT.The Law has the power to leverage the conservation of LOT in Romania (i) through making LOT eligible for project funding (for their inventory, educational activities, and management, for example, within the Life Programme of the European Commission or National funds), (ii) making possible the mainstreaming of LOT in key urban development, infrastructural and nature conservation strategies and (iii) through encouraging the creation of institutional space for arboricultural specialization to address the specific management needs of LOT (Figure 1).

| KEY MESSAGES
Key contextual features of Romania, defined by Hartel et al. (2016) as "social-ecological momentum" for sustainability transformations were probably important in the development of the Law for LOT: the dynamic and maturing character of the Romanian politics with the establishment of a young politician generation, the nature-related values emerging in the society, local initiatives and the civil society empowering and gaining political influence.On the other hand, the existence of the Law, without a genuine political, institutional, cultural and economic support, will not guarantee the real protection of LOT in Romania, as it is the case with several other existing but weakly functional Laws and regulations in this country.In this respect, the civil society and the academia will likely have high role in the future implementation of the Law for the benefit of the LOT (Figure 1).We propose the following messages for developing national Laws for LOT: (i) Generate reliable knowledge about the LOT by consulting the scientific literature and implementing field research.This includes the heritage-, economic-, and ecological values of LOT.(ii) Perseverence in advocacy and communication.Key features of our advocacy and communication work were: inclusivity, empowerment, inspiration, presence in the local communities when needed, communication through conventional mass media and social media.These activities were continuously implemented.(iii) Involve translational and bridging persons who have good reputation in the level of civil society, in academic circles, and in political circles as well.(iv) Involve and help politicians who believe that advocacy for LOT in the Government can be part of the political career for a better environment.