The DeForest Marathon

Illegal logging in Romania is a widespread phenomenon. Romanians agree that this is the countries problem that is most likely to have a grave impact on our future. The subject is reported upon in the news, but people have come to a sad resignation that there is nothing they can do as individuals to stop illegal logging in Romania. WWF Romania set up a plan of measures that should be taken to have more efficient monitoring of wood transport and logging across the country, to make illegal logging virtually impossible. But for these measures to be put into place, authorities need to take action. Our challenge was to get as many people as possible to sign the petition for a change in the procedures of the Forest Law.

We set out to give a tangible dimension to the phenomenon of illegal logging in Romania. We wanted people to not think of this as an abstract problem, but actually experience the magnitude of the problem and feel so enraged by it, that they had to take action. We partnered with marathon runner Andrei Rosu and sent him on a 3 day, 115 km trail run through the most affected areas in Romania. Every day, Andrei would go live on Facebook and people could experience his run from a subjective angle (POV), while also listening to Andrei's impressions about what he was experiencing. We also created video interviews with specialists from WWF talking about what needs to be done about illegal logging and created a campaign after the movie with the most dramatic sceneries from the trail. All campaign materials directed people to the landing page where they could sign the petition to change the Forest Law.