
3 700 hectares of forest in Irkutsk region was saved from illegal logging
On the initiative of forest programme of WWF Russia the independent experts examined the acts of forest pathology examination officially uploaded on the website of the Ministry of Forestry of Irkutsk region for eight months. The experts checked 297 acts for the legality of sanitary clear cutting and discovered that 96 % of acts had violations.
WWF in partnership with the experts sent the official letter with the description of the violations to the Ministry of Forestry of Irkutsk region and the Department of Forestry of the Siberian Federal District. As a result of the violations’ detection 154 acts were dismissed and called back so 3 707 hectares of forests were saved from illegal logging.
Among the most often registered violations of the acts were the incorrect boundaries for sanitary cutting area, fake signatures, the wrong amount of timber allocated for cutting, the controversy between the act and its appendixes, the wrong list of tree species. The experts also found the documents that stated that the forest pathologists walked for 50 kilometres a day during tree counting. It cannot be trusted as the total tree counting takes much longer time and strength as the expert have to count almost each tree in the area. It means that the field counting in fact was not implemented and the data was fake. The detected violations regardless of the reason whether they were due to the incompetency of the experts or made intentionally could have led to cutting of the healthy timber.
WWF Russia already expressed concern about the big amount of violations during sanitary cutting in Irkutsk region. The violations were detected during documents’ examination and field inspections. The group of local experts examined 20 areas, eleven of them were examined before the sanitary logging and nine of them after the sanitary logging. All 20 areas had violations such as the contradictions of facts in the documents , the violation of fire prevention and sanitary regulations in forests.
WWF Russia
reminds that the forest does not only keep rich biodiversity it has different
functions such as keeps hydrological regime and balance, prevent draughts and
soil erosion, river drying up, keeps the stable level of the subterranean
waters.
WWF Russia experts claim that the precautions taken to prevent illegal timber harvesting and sustainable use of forest resources provided the intact forest and spawning river zones are protected help regulate climate changes which consequences Irkutsk region had recently.