4 CRIMINAL CASES WERE INITIATED FOR ILLEGAL LOGGING IN INGUSHETIA
What's happened?
In the Republic of Ingushetia, the police initiated 4 criminal cases on illegal logging, which WWF-Russia discovered, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Republic checked and confirmed in May 2022.
There are some peculiarities
It is worth mentioning that so far the cases have not been initiated for all the revealed facts, but only for illegal logging on the territory of 4 district forestries: Alkunskiy, Nesterovskiy, Chemulginskiy and Karabulakskiy. The total volume of harvested wood in these cases exceeded 150 cubic meters, the damage amounted to more than 18 million rubles (18,331,575). Even larger volumes of logging are expected to be checked. In May, after monitoring by WWF-Russia and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Ingushetia, the confirmed volume of illegally cut wood amounted to at least 250 cubic meters, and the damage made up to 44 million rubles.
A little bit of background
In May 2022 it was the first time when WWF-Russia used satellite images to analyze an entire region in the Caucasus. Thanks to a remote study of the forest of Ingushetia, it was possible to identify more than a dozen of illegal logging on an area of over 140 hectares and with damage of more than 44 million rubles. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Ingushetia responded to WWF-Russia's appeal, conducted inspections and confirmed the illegality of logging at most sites, namely 12 of them.
What will happen next?
"We have sent a request to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Ingushetia to clarify the situation in the remaining areas, in particular, whether these materials were transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and whether there is information about the results of police consideration. Specifically, we are talking about 7 more forest areas where violations can be confirmed," - says Elena Cherkasova, Senior Forest Officer of Russian Caucasus Ecoregional Office WWF-Russia, - "We hope that joint work with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Ingushetia and law enforcement agencies will help prevent illegal activities in Forestries of the Republic and preserve the nature of the mountain forests of our country."