Ahead of winter, Kire Mihailov, deputy director of the state company National Forests, made an appeal to the public: don't buy firewood from timber thieves, even when they offer it cheaper. Every such purchase, he says, is direct support for the people stripping Macedonia's forests bare.

Behind every illegal logging operation, according to Mihailov, stands an organised group that often doesn't hesitate to physically attack the company's staff and members of the forest police. As an example he cited an incident this summer in the Štip region. "Anyone who in future dares to raise a hand against an authorised official should be prepared in advance for a serious prison sentence, because this is an attack on an official," he warned.

Then came the sentence that matters more than the appeal itself. "Yes, there are still employees of ours with whom we have unfortunately established certain connections to criminal structures, and wherever we detect that, there will be no mercy," Mihailov said. According to him, there have already been suspensions, criminal complaints and disciplinary proceedings.

So the citizen buying wood to get through the winter is asked to check the legality of the load dumped in front of their house. But when organised logging has its own people inside the very company meant to stop it - who is guarding the forest? How many suspensions, how many complaints, and against how many employees - no numbers were given.

This year the forests are being eaten away by fire, too. Last month Mihailov said the company had registered 138 forest fires, and the land burned during the summer season runs into hundreds of hectares. The damage has yet to be assessed.

The appeal to citizens is fair enough. But the forest's first line of defence is not the buyer outside his house - it is the guard in the woods. And there, by the deputy director's own words, the house has not yet been cleaned.