Due to logging schemes, the Ukrainian Carpathians are becoming like a desert

The State Forestry Agency reports that in 2015 the volume of illegal logging amounted to 24.1 thousand km. However, the department itself emphasizes that this figure has nothing to do with reality.

Recently appeared on the president’s website petition with the emotional headline “Immediately stop the barbaric deforestation of the Carpathian forests and the smuggling of round timber from Ukraine!” Now the petition has been signed by about 1,500 citizens out of the 25 thousand required for the appeal to be considered by the president.

There are several official types of felling: for general use, for the improvement of forests (the so-called sanitary), cutting for road construction, thinning.

How logging schemes work

Under the guise of destroying diseased trees, young and healthy trees are often cut down. In addition, clearing areas often turn out to be much larger than stated. After them, it seems that an epidemic occurred in the forest -There are only so large cutting areas left.

Another way to make money on timber is to write off “business” (high quality) wood as firewood and sell it to private companies at half the price, or simply cut it several times using the same lumberjack ticket.

Typically, felled forest is exported from Ukraine as cobblestones (the so-called unprocessed felled tree trunks). Although processed wood is much more expensive, 80% of wood is sold this way - to make it easier. At the same time Legal Ukrainian wood processing enterprises are barely surviving.

To keep track of felled trees, each official trunk must have an identification chip - a plastic label with a unique number. However, as local residents say, such chips are stored in “bags” in “black lumberjacks”.

Uncontrolled deforestation is not only the work of poachers who they smuggle it abroad on an industrial scale . Local residents are also actively cutting down forests for their own needs, which is justified by unemployment in the region.

Another puzzle of the overall picture of the raw material economy of Ukraine : Residents of mountainous regions go abroad to earn money, where they engage in carpentry, among other things. That is, it turns out that both people and raw materials leave the same regions, although forest processing could provide jobs to local residents and become a real sector of the economy.

It is also worth noting that smuggling timber export schemes cannot be implemented only with the help of Ukrainian corruption. EU customs officers, where illegal timber is sent, should also be involved in this.

Forest for Donbass terrorists

In addition to smuggling and shipping abroad, the wood is cut and sold to the domestic market. However, sometimes Ukrainian recipients turn out to be completely unexpected.

Last summer, it became known that 52 wagons with contraband were detained in the ATO zone, including 12 trains with wood, which was transported for the “LPR” and “DPR” separatists. As the media wrote, this forest turned out to be not simple, but strategic - it was used to build new fortified areas for militants, although the documents stated that it was third-class timber, “for firewood.”

The scheme worked like this: Poltava and Chernigov forestry companies sold wood through auctions to a commercial company, which in turn resold it to the separatists.

Then the court seized 645 cubic meters. m of timber weighing almost 600 tons.

Traditionally, the law has had its supporters and critics. The first emphasized that it was necessary to protect local producers, while others said that the moratorium would only lead to a reduction in logging.

“This is a controversial decision. There are certain types of wood that are not processed in Ukraine, for example, thin gauges, but they are in demand abroad. On the other hand, the export of oak was prohibited. This is definitely necessary, because it is often not enough for Ukrainian producers,” - explains ecologist Oleg Listopad.

However, too little time has passed since the introduction of the moratorium to fully assess its effect.

Moreover, a new government bill was registered in the Rada, which proposes to lift the export ban. Its authors explain the need to resume exports by saying that the moratorium on timber exports violates not only the terms of Ukraine’s membership in the WTO, but also the provisions of the Association Agreement with the EU.

If the bill is adopted, the sale of unprocessed timber will be carried out at auction - separately for Ukrainian buyers, separately for non-residents.

At the same time, the volume of timber that could not be sold at auctions for domestic buyers will be put up for auction for non-residents.

It is not entirely clear how the new auction policy will affect the scale of timber cutting. It is logical that an export permit could lead to more intensive destruction of forests, which are already catastrophically thinning.

Predatory deforestation of the Carpathian forests, when the slopes become bald literally before our eyes, and endless trains loaded with cut down “round timber” pass through Berehomet - according to eyewitnesses, sometimes their number can be about a hundred cars per day, can be inspired by forces hostile to Ukraine.

This conclusion was reached by experts invited by a group of Maidan activists to assess the current situation and find ways out of it.

Unfortunately, statistics on deforestation in Ukraine are not kept. But recently, a catastrophically large number of trees have been cut down in the Carpathians. This process has been especially active in the last three years, despite the ban on the export of round timber. The satellite photo clearly shows how much area is now left without trees:

At least one third to half of the former forest wealth has already been irretrievably lost

However, not everyone understands what deforestation leads to. Mass destruction of forests leads to disruption of the oxygen cycle on the planet. This may end in the fact that in some areas of the planet it will simply be impossible to live - there will be nothing to breathe.

The destruction of trees leads to swamping of the area, which threatens a change in vegetation. Reservoirs will be overgrown with grass and mud. Deforestation leads to a decrease in ozone in the atmosphere. This will lead to poor harvests, epidemics, an increase in the number of people getting cancer, and the formation of ozone holes.

The disappearance of trees leads to desertification, as precipitation washes away the fertile layer of soil. Because of this, residents of areas that have become arid will become refugees. Many animals and plants will die. Statistics on deforestation show that this leads to a change in the albedo of the earth and can provoke a disaster. Albedo is the ability of a planet to reflect radioactive streams from the sun.

Additional consequences of deforestation:

sudden changes in temperature;

changing of the climate;

an excess of sunlight, which will destroy plants that like to live in the shade;

creation of a greenhouse effect in the biosphere;

destruction of ecosystems;

the amount of nitrogen increases in the soil, which prevents new trees from growing.

Trees retain groundwater flows because their roots feed on it. The death of forests contributes to an increase in their abundance, since there is no one to absorb excess moisture. The liquid comes to the surface, fills rivers, evaporates, and falls in the form of numerous precipitations. This is why deforestation is associated with increased flooding, as well as the appearance of hurricanes in areas where they have never been seen.

All these negative consequences are increasingly manifested in those regions of Ukraine where short-term interests have prevailed over strategic ones.

Previously, it was believed that everything was to blame for the greed and corruption of Ukrainian officials at all levels, any actions of which were aimed only and exclusively at obtaining hepheshta.

However, the conclusions made by the commission allow us to look at the problem from a different angle.

It was possible to establish that when cutting down forests, the volumes significantly exceed those declared due to the fact that the tools used by loggers have characteristics that differ from the declared ones.

Permission to cut down is usually given for a certain period, based on the number of workers declared by the cutter and the productivity of the saws.

In this way, it is possible to very accurately determine the amount (volume) of forests to be cut down.

And this is where the fun begins - it turns out that, given the total number of workers, they use much more powerful saws than indicated in the permit.

Moreover, they themselves don’t even know about it!

Investigation revealed that the standard model is a chainsaw Husqvarna-236 , declared power 1.4 kW. In reality, the power of almost all saws measured by activists was 1.804 kW, or 0.404 kW more than the rated value!

Such a seemingly small increase actually gives an increase in productivity three times(since it is entirely aimed at increasing the cutting speed), which explains the abnormally high rates of deforestation...

It was established that the manufacturer, a Swedish company, repeatedly received delegations from KCDiTO, whose members showed an increased interest in the production process, and also took an active interest. where exactly this or that batch of finished products will be sent.

Having learned that the destination country was Ukraine, they sought permission to participate in the assembly of engines installed on saws, thus obtaining the opportunity to commit sabotage by illegally boosting them (the engines).

So the disappearance of the Carpathian forests is nothing more than a carefully planned action aimed at undermining the very foundations of the existence of independent Ukraine.

The evidence collected, as noted in the report, is comprehensive for those who understand.

Ukrainian environmental communities often publish pictures from the series “it was” and “it became”, posting photographs taken with the help of quadcopters of the rapidly balding slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. Over the past three years, they have become covered with huge bald spots of illegal logging. Uncontrolled logging has become a common business for residents of the Carpathian region, Transcarpathia and Bukovina, and the vast majority of wood goes abroad - although formally in Ukraine there is a moratorium on the export of Carpathian round timber - as logs cut down and cleared of branches are called.

Give round timber to Europe!

Timber trucks loaded with logs move almost openly along mountain roads, and entire trains of timber travel along railways. They can be seen even at the station of the regional center of Ivano-Frankivsk. According to the State Forestry Resources Agency of Ukraine, in the first half of 2017, about 14.4 thousand cubic meters of forest were illegally cut down in the country, and the amount of damage from poachers reached 85.8 million hryvnia (190 million rubles). Over the past year, loggers removed about 43.8 thousand cubic meters, which cost the state 200 million hryvnia (440 million rubles). Although everyone understands that these official data are nothing more than the tip of the iceberg of illegal logging. Moreover, according to Western Ukrainian journalists, official statistics on forest losses may be deliberately underestimated - so as not to once again shock the public with these data.

The scale of deforestation is so large that it causes a drop in prices for raw materials - over the past year and a half, the cost of round timber has decreased from 80 to 60, and even to 50 dollars per cubic meter. But even under these conditions, selling timber “to the West” is much more profitable than sending it to Ukrainian wood processing enterprises, which are steadily falling into disrepair.

It is extremely difficult to prevent the implementation of a criminal scheme that leads from poaching to smuggling of felled timber. In conditions of a catastrophic decline in living standards, predatory deforestation is the only source of income for many residents of Western Ukraine, and the local law enforcement system is ineffective. The unpopular central government has not controlled the situation for a long time; corrupt security officials from various departments are usually themselves involved in poaching schemes. Plots are often guarded by armed semi-criminal groups operating under the “brand” of the “Right Sector” (an organization banned on the territory of the Russian Federation) and other far-right organizations.

In August, Bukovinian environmental activists intercepted a train loaded with round timber near the village of Glubokoe, on the road to the Vadul-Siret customs post, through which the main flow of cargo passes on the Ukrainian-Romanian border. According to some reports, this batch was intended for a well-known Romanian company that actively cooperates with “black” lumberjacks. However, the owners of the illegally harvested timber managed to free the train with the help of employees of the Chernivtsi prosecutor's office. In October, residents of the Storozhynetsky district of Bukovina tried to set up roadblocks on the roads to prevent the removal of timber - the guards of poachers cleared the way for timber trucks.

Everything was washed away

The concern of local residents is understandable: the disappearance of forests not only spoils the beautiful Carpathian views, but also creates conditions for catastrophic mudflows, which are increasingly affecting the region. In 2008, prolonged rains led to a huge flood, covering Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Chernivtsi, Transcarpathian and Vinnytsia regions. Dozens of houses in the Carpathians were demolished by powerful mudflows. Ukrainian ecologists directly pointed to the cause of the cataclysm - deforestation of mountain slopes, no longer capable of holding excess water and loose soil. Since then, the scale of deforestation has increased many times over - so the next major flood, triggered by a violation of the hydrobalance, will most likely not be long in coming.

Official Kyiv tried to deal with this problem purely formally. Following public pressure, in April 2015 parliament introduced a ten-year moratorium on the export of unprocessed timber to stop forest destruction and support the surviving wood processing industries.

Deforestation has not stopped, but the moratorium has seriously quarreled with its financial donors from. In May 2016, Brussels demanded that Ukraine lift restrictions on the export of round timber, threatening to freeze the next portion of the loan tranche totaling 1.8 billion hryvnia. Moreover, European officials directly pointed out to Kyiv that Ukraine’s actions contradict the terms of the Association Agreement with the European Union - for which, in fact, Euromaidan stood.

“The moratorium on exports is objectively perceived by our partners as a violation of the Association Agreement,” Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze admitted then. As a result, Ukraine received this money only in April of this year - after the president once again promised his European partners to lift the moratorium. But the Ukrainian authorities are aware of the unpopularity of such a decision and are still in no hurry to lift the formal ban on the export of timber.

Timber and other colonial goods

It seems that Brussels' patience is running out. In September, the head of the EU official delegation, Hug Mingarelli, warned that if the moratorium on the export of round timber is maintained, Ukraine will not receive the next third part of the loan. Apparently, this prompted President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Groysman to take decisive action in parliament.

The other day, on November 8, speaking in , the leader of the Radical Party said that the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers is actively pushing in parliament for the abolition of restrictions on timber exports. “You are pressing parliament to lift the moratorium on timber removal, because you need a loan from, and for this you want to continue exporting timber, instead of agitating them to bring equipment here, create jobs here in Ukraine, and not convert Ukraine into a raw material appendage to the powers that be,” Lyashko said from the podium.

Even the most loyal Ukrainian politicians are increasingly forced to call a spade a spade, stating that the victory of Euromaidan has turned the country into a supplier of cheap raw materials and labor for the EU economic system. And if necessary, European officials are ready to defend their interests as harshly as possible, taking advantage of the fact that the Ukrainian government is completely dependent on them, which takes on a pronounced character of colonial exploitation.

“European partners are no longer shy. They are not interested in Ukrainian cars, mechanisms, metals. There are no quotas for them, there are no support or integration programs. But raw materials, scrap metal, and agricultural products with a zero level of processing are quite in demand,” the former first deputy prime minister of Ukraine commented on the situation. - Now that Ukraine has lost almost all its positions and is driven into a corner, it’s time to raise issues that have not been resolved before. Do you want a loan for gas purchases? Do you want another tranche of macroeconomic assistance? Lift the moratorium on timber exports! In fact, even under the current moratorium, round timber was exported under the guise of products, firewood, whatever. Nobody adheres to this moratorium - 70 percent of our forest goes to Europe. What they are driving from the border areas is not subject to accounting at all. Another thing is important: with Ukraine they are switching to the language of brutal dictatorship and blackmail. And this is a new reality that the current government has to live with. Unfortunately, so do the people of Ukraine.”

Back to the roots

It should be noted that a significant part of the Eastern Carpathians has already been subjected to large-scale deforestation, which began at the beginning of the twentieth century under the Habsburg dynasty that ruled Austria-Hungary and continued in the interwar period, when this region was divided between Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The railways that now transport Ukrainian timber to the EU were built by the Austro-Hungarian government specifically for logging needs. In 1924, the British company The Century European Timber Corporation entered into a ten-year concession with the Polish government to harvest 17 million cubic meters of timber, which caused enormous damage to Belarusian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian forests. Thus, in 1925 alone, British businessmen removed over 800 thousand cubic meters of wood from the territory of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which led to the destruction of entire forest areas.

He called on his fellow citizens to chop wood for the sake of independence from Russian gas supplies. No one has yet thought about how long Ukrainian forests will last, but today it is already clear that the loss of natural resources turned out to be a very unexpected price for Ukrainians for the right to “enter Europe.”

People's Deputies of Ukraine voted for the draft law "On amendments to certain laws (regarding the introduction of a ban on clear cutting of fir-beech forests on the mountain slopes of the Carpathian region)." The decision was supported by 259 parliamentarians.

This bill is aimed at improving measures to protect fir-beech forests on the mountain slopes of the Carpathian region from clear cutting for both business and recreational purposes, the explanatory note says.

The document also notes that in 2000, a law was adopted that introduced a 10-year moratorium on clearing for primary use in spruce-beech forests on the steep slopes of the Carpathians. In 2011, this moratorium ceased to apply.

In 2015, in its raw state, it brought the Ukrainian economy $345 million in foreign exchange earnings, or 0.9% of total export earnings. Experts say this figure is completely incommensurate with the scale of losses: uncontrolled deforestation in the West has led to a decrease in forest cover from 16% in 1996 to 11% in 2015. To achieve the optimal level of forest cover of 20% in Ukraine today, new trees need to be planted on an area of ​​2.5 million hectares.

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Round timber: if they start cutting down again, we will be left without Carpathian forests

Here and there, from above, bald spots are visible in once dense plantings; in the mountains, the earth hangs terribly over the valleys - after the next downpours, mudflows will come down, destroying roads and houses. This is a common phenomenon in the Carpathians, but why don’t they think about its causes? Moreover, many country houses, and not only houses, hotels in the mountains are wooden. Below is a house - above is a bald clearing. It is doubtful that they are asking for permission to cut down a tree if it is growing outside the window. Which means it’s mine.

Carpathian forests are being cut down on orders from the Kremlin. Predatory deforestation of Carpathian forests, when the slopes literally become bald before our eyes, and endless trains loaded with cut-down “round timber” pass through Beregomet - according to eyewitness accounts, sometimes their number can be about a hundred wagons per day, maybe be inspired by forces hostile to Ukraine. This conclusion was reached by experts invited by a group of Maidan activists to assess the current situation and find ways out of it. Unfortunately, statistics on deforestation in Ukraine are not kept. But recently, a catastrophically large number of trees have been cut down in the Carpathians. This process has been especially active in the last three years, despite the ban on the export of round timber. The satellite photo clearly shows how much area is now left without trees: At least from a third to half of the former forest wealth has already been irretrievably lost. However, not everyone understands what deforestation leads to. Mass destruction of forests leads to disruption of the oxygen cycle on the planet. This may end in the fact that in some areas of the planet it will simply be impossible to live - there will be nothing to breathe. The destruction of trees leads to swamping of the area, which threatens a change in vegetation. Reservoirs will be overgrown with grass and mud. Deforestation leads to a decrease in ozone in the atmosphere. This will lead to poor harvests, epidemics, an increase in the number of people getting cancer, and the formation of ozone holes. The disappearance of trees leads to desertification, as precipitation washes away the fertile layer of soil. Because of this, residents of areas that have become arid will become refugees. Many animals and plants will die. Statistics on deforestation show that this leads to a change in the albedo of the earth and can provoke a disaster. Albedo is the ability of a planet to reflect radioactive streams from the sun. Additional effects of deforestation: extreme temperature changes; changing of the climate; an excess of sunlight, which will destroy plants that like to live in the shade; creation of a greenhouse effect in the biosphere; destruction of ecosystems; The amount of nitrogen in the soil increases, which prevents new trees from growing. Trees retain groundwater flows because their roots feed on it. The death of forests contributes to an increase in their abundance, since there is no one to absorb excess moisture. The liquid comes to the surface, fills rivers, evaporates, and falls in the form of numerous precipitations. This is why deforestation is associated with increased flooding, as well as the appearance of hurricanes in areas where they have never been seen. All these negative consequences are increasingly manifested in those regions of Ukraine where short-term interests have prevailed over strategic ones. Previously, it was believed that everything was to blame for the greed and corruption of Ukrainian officials at all levels, any actions of which were aimed only and exclusively at obtaining gefest. However, the conclusions made by the commission allow us to look at the problem from a different angle. It was possible to establish that when cutting down forests, the volumes significantly exceed those declared due to the fact that the tools used by loggers have characteristics that differ from the declared ones. Permission to cut down is usually given for a certain period, based on the number of workers declared by the cutter and the productivity of the saws. In this way, it is possible to very accurately determine the amount (volume) of forests to be cut down. And this is where the fun begins - it turns out that, given the total number of workers, they use much more powerful saws than indicated in the permit. Moreover, they themselves don’t even know about it! The investigation revealed that the standard model is a Husqvarna-236 chainsaw, with a stated power of 1.4 kW. In reality, the power of almost all saws measured by activists was 1.804 kW, or 0.404 kW more than the nameplate! Such a seemingly small increase in fact gives a threefold increase in productivity (since it is entirely directed to increasing the cutting speed), which explains the anomalous high rates of deforestation... It was established that the manufacturer, a Swedish company, repeatedly received delegations from KCDiTO, whose members showed increased interest in the production process, and were also actively interested. where exactly this or that batch of finished products will be sent. Having learned that the destination country was Ukraine, they sought permission to participate in the assembly of engines installed on saws, thus obtaining the opportunity to commit sabotage by illegally boosting them (the engines). So the disappearance of the Carpathian forests is nothing more than a carefully planned action aimed at undermining the very foundations of the existence of independent Ukraine. The evidence collected, as noted in the report, is comprehensive for those who understand.