Yesterday, during a public report by the State Forest Resources Agency of Ukraine (Derzhlisahentsvo), its head, Viktor Smal, announced that a meeting between ministries would be held next week to approve changes to logging rules.
The proposed changes concern two main aspects:
First, the introduction of “logging for scientific research purposes.” Foresters would only need approval from a research institution to log whatever they want, however they want, on 1% of forests, with no rules or volume limits.
Second, the new rules would allow foresters to carry out the logging they need by bypassing the Forest Management Plan (lisovporiadkuvannya) procedure. This means they could avoid public discussion and approval from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources (Min dovkillia).
Foresters do not hide the fact that this resolution is needed to increase timber harvesting and “gain access to resources.” In other words, to log where logging was previously restricted.
It is no surprise that foresters completely rejected proposals from civil society to limit these “scientific” logging activities to areas where planned logging is already allowed. They also rejected the proposal to require public discussion and ministry approval for sensitive logging activities, such as building logging roads.
In addition to us, our colleagues from WWF-Ukraine and Ecoaction (Ekodiya) have also highlighted the risks of this resolution. The European Union has repeatedly stressed in its reports that Ukraine must strengthen independent control over logging operations.
Therefore, we urge the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources to intervene immediately and prevent the adoption of the new logging rules.
