Where have all the (Greek) forests gone?

One of the Greek Sundays, Realnews (www.real.gr) reports for World Environment Day that between 1987 and now (2011) Greece lost 13.5% of its total forest or woodland areas, a total of 4,500,000 stremma.

How many illegal houses replaced all the trees that were burnt, bulldozed or cut down?

1 stremma equals 1000 sq. m.



Binsey Poplars

(Felled 1879)

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Gerard Manley Hopkins