[senko]

Just this week I talked to a person doing tree pruning/forestry, they were negotiating a job in a rural area in Croatia (wider Karlovac area).

The particular patch of land is still suspected to contain mines, although "in theory" they were all cleared out.

The client didn't want to pay for the minesweeeping tech team to ensure safety, the workers didn't want to wade into a forest that might still be mined.

I suspect this is not an isolated case. It's far from over.

[gregopet]

Our firefighters collaborate with Croatian aerial firefighters (our neighbouring country). They say there is often pressure from politicians to drop water on wildfires in mined areas, however this is still dangerous to the planes as they have to go real low (a mine could explode spontaneously in their flight path) and after a few near misses they've adopted a policy: if it's not worth demining it's not worth saving from fire either.

Guess they will have more work now

[cucumber3732842]

IDK man.

On one hand it might be a real risk.

On the other hand nobody except the timber industry is cutting down a random tree in the middle of the woods. If you're trimming trees on a power line cut or at the edge of a clearing you're working somewhere that has already been gone over with men and machine to make that cut or clearing. So it might be one of those "basically no chance but due to rules... blah blah licensed professionals... blah blah insurance.... blah blah" where even though everyone knows it's fine the guy who has to do the work can't just go do the work without paying someone else to take the liability, etc, etc.

But then again, it's Croatia. They're not rich enough to afford that kind of dysfunction.

Turtles all the way down.

[senko]

Yeah this was a few trees at the edge of the forest leaning over some houses, needed clearing. "Should be fine", but they're not keen on taking the (personal, physical) risk.

Thing is, you can't narrow it down to some acceptable level of risk. Mines are by definition stealthy, the only way to reduce the risk is to eliminate it by combing over everything, which is extremely hard, tedious, expensive, etc.