The Kyiv City Commercial Court upheld the claim of the Kovel District Prosecutor's Office and canceled the order of the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine, which allowed sand mining on the territory of the Smolyarovsky reserve in the Kovel district of Volyn region.
This was reported by the press service of the Volyn Regional Prosecutor's Office on Facebook.
The court also invalidated the results of the auction, the contract for the sale of a special permit for the use of subsoil and the special permit itself.
Prosecutors proved that the State Service of Geology and Subsoil violated the requirements of the legislation on the protection of the nature reserve fund when in January 2024 they sold a special permit for sand extraction at the Starovyzhivske deposit to a private enterprise at an electronic auction. The deposit is located within the forest fund of the Dubechenne forestry of the Kovel Forestry branch of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” on the territory of the Smolyarivskyi general zoological reserve of local importance.
The development of this field could further lead to the destruction of the nature reserve, the prosecutor's office said. Prosecutors also found out that the field is located at the Halyna Volia-1 archaeological site, a Mesolithic site in the Semenova Hora tract. This site is on the List of Newly Discovered Archaeological Heritage Sites of Volyn Oblast and is under state protection. This fact also makes it impossible to extract minerals here.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote about the fact that Activists of the Ukrainian Conservation Group have paid attention Mindness to the problem of auctions for the use of subsoil. They urged to prevent deforestation for the sake of sand extraction.
We also talked about a criminal group that in Donetsk region illegally extracted coal for over one billion hryvnias. In addition, EcoPolitic posted a video that clearly demonstrates that Peat production results in the destruction of nature.
