Footage is circulating on social media: Mount Lopushnik has been stripped bare. Dozens of felled trees, the ground left naked. The same is happening on Jablanica. And the deputy director of Macedonian Forests, Kire Mihailov, is at the same time celebrating his birthday at a DPMNE event.

The Left is demanding the dismissal of the entire leadership of the state enterprise - director Zdravko Trajanov and his deputy. The accusation is blunt: the logging mafia works every weekend, and they stay silent. Audit reports show a catastrophic state of affairs at the enterprise, with "brutal politicisation and an incompetent staff."

Jablanica is an especially painful point. On the Albanian side, Jablanica has been declared a national park. On the Macedonian side, the procedure for designation has been sitting there for years. In the meantime, the forest is being cut down.

This picture isn't new - it's chronic. Macedonian Forests functions as a magnet for party appointments, and the cutting continues regardless of who's in power. The question isn't just whose birthday Mihailov is celebrating - it's why an institution tasked with protecting the forests is losing them, systematically.