A natural monument was turned into a quarry in Zhytomyr region

A natural monument was turned into a quarry in Zhytomyr region shutterstock
Katerina Belousova

Eco-activists appealed to the prosecutor's office

The Zhytomyr Regional State Administration issued a permit for further work on granite extraction in the quarry, which covers the territory of the geological monument of nature Lyznikovsky granite outcrops.

The issued permit does not contain any environmental restrictions, although the monument has been gradually destroyed since 2018, reports the public organization "Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group" on Facebook.

Eco-activists said that in Ukraine there are quarries with geological monuments or other objects of the nature reserve fund. In such cases, the protection of the monument is entrusted to the mining enterprise.

"The company decided to ignore its responsibility by destroying the territory of the eastern branch and significantly damaging the territory of the western branch of the attraction," they said, adding that damage was recorded on satellite images as early as 2018.

The authors emphasized that new satellite images confirm the continued destruction.

"We indicated this when we submitted comments to the report on the environmental impact assessment," the UPG said.

Eco-activists noted that the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Zhytomyr State Administration issued a permit for further work without introducing any environmental restrictions. And in the conclusion of the Department of Internal Affairs, there was no information about the protected object. Therefore, they turned to the prosecutor's office.

Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, tha on the border of the Rivne Nature Reserve is planned to start amber mining on the site of the largest swamp massifs of Ukraine, Syr Pogonya. The Ministry of Environment Protection and Natural Resources agreed to put the site up for auction, although it had previously agreed to bequeath this territory.

As EcoPolitic previously reported, in Transcarpathia, the Security Service of Ukraine exposed one of the enterprises, which is illegal mined andesite for 309 million UAH.

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