The publication NGL.media and the state enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" exchanged harsh public statements with accusations of each other after the publication of the publication's material entitled "Fantastic logging and where to find them", in which it is said that the forest cover of the Carpathians has decreased by 10% in 20 years.
NGL.media and the state-owned enterprise posted their statements on their Facebook pages.
The claims to the investigators of the State Enterprise "Lisa Ukrainy" were formulated in the form of 4 points.
Claim #1
In the first of them, the foresters indicated that on the GLAD maps, which the journalists used for their research, you can see the situation with the loss of forests not only on the territory of Ukraine, but also in the EU countries. According to them, "it is even clearly visible that Finland, Sweden, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany experienced the greatest "loss" of forests since 2000."
The State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" said that GLAD identifies forest cover when trees reach a height of more than 5 m.
"In other words, GLAD begins to "see" a new forest only after about 10 years," foresters claim.
They also compared the allegedly deforested areas of forestry on the maps published by the newspaper and found that the red zones included territories that, according to them, never belonged to the forest fund lands.
"They are the property of local communities. Instead, the territories of the forest fund are forested. To make sure of this, it is enough to go to the place and take a photo. That is, drawing conclusions about the "loss" of forests based on GLAD maps is absolutely incorrect!" – are convinced of the State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine".
Answer by NGL.media
The journalists replied to this claim that they did not intend to analyze the loss of forest cover in European countries, they were only interested in the Ukrainian Carpathians. And they made assumptions that the foresters talked about other countries in order to show that "we are not the worst."
Regarding the 10-year delay in “seeing” the forest by GLAD maps, NGL.media emphasized that on the interactive map they indicated specific data not only on losses, but also on gains – with an explanation given by GLAD scientists themselves that these the data cannot be compared, because satellite images do not make it possible to establish exactly whether the forest has recovered or whether other vegetation has appeared there.
The investigators also emphasized that they received the boundaries of the forest farms on the map in response to an official request from the "Ukrderzhlisproekt" VO, which is subordinate to the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine, which includes the SE "Forests of Ukraine".
"That's why the question is not for us, but for you," the publication said.
Claim #2
The SE "Forests of Ukraine" noted that the Greenpeace report referred to by the journalists was not directed against Ukraine. They emphasized that, according to the report, Ukraine has the highest percentage of forests completely protected from human activity compared to other countries of the Carpathian region (Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia). And the adopted changes to the legislation on the protection of Carpathian forests give hope for their preservation.
As part of this claim to journalists, Ukrainian foresters began to add claims to the Greenpeace report.
Answer by NGL.media
The investigators believe that it makes no sense to comment on this claim, since they did not aim to show "who has it worse", but tried to find out what is happening in our country.
Claim #3
The State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" drew the attention of journalists to a problem "that for some reason was not noticed by NGL.media" – the massive drying of spruce plantations associated with climate changes and other factors.
Answer by NGL.media
The representatives of the publishing house pointed out that, in fact, in the text of the study, this problem is directly mentioned in the fragment describing the scheme of reshaping.
Claim #4
Foresters believe that the topic of illegal felling is used in the publication in a very manipulative manner. But they agreed that the principle of inevitability of punishment for illegal logging does not yet work in Ukraine.
"In isolated cases, the materials on illegal logging handed over to law enforcement officers by the security of the State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" end in real terms of imprisonment," say foresters.
Answer by NGL.media
Journalists asked to provide them with such examples so that they could use them in future publications.
Instead of a summary
In conclusion, the SE "Forests of Ukraine" reported that they are preparing an appeal to the European EU4IM project, which financed this NGL.media publication, because "during the preparation of the material with European grant funds, the authors did not ask for a comment from any official institution – the Ministry of Environment, the State Forestry Agency, Derzhlisprojektu, UkrNDihirlis".
Foresters believe that the authors deliberately tried to create a one-sided vision of the situation and hide important facts, as well as lobbying the interests of "a certain circle of persons".
In response to these objections, the publication was asked to duplicate them in a copy of the letter.
"Because we are always interested in lobbying whose interests will be attributed to us this time," the journalists noted.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that on October 14 edition NGL.media made public the results of our own investigation into the extent of the destruction of the forest cover of the Ukrainian Carpathians in 20 years.
