The State Ecological Inspectorate of the Carpathian District found illegal felling of trees on the territory of the Kosmak Forestry of the Kutske Forestry branch and issued a claim for more than UAH 83 million to the forestry. In response, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” publicly accused the environmental inspectors of bias in the results of this inspection.
The State Environmental Inspectorate posted a notice of the unscheduled state supervision on its website, and the SE “Forests of Ukraine” responded on its Facebook page.
What information on the inspection was published by the environmental inspection
The agency said that they conducted an unscheduled inspection on the territory of the Kosmak forestry of the Kutske Forestry branch, which is subordinated to the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”, on behalf of the State Environmental Inspectorate of Ukraine in response to a citizen's appeal.
According to the environmental inspectors, they found illegal felling of trees and calculated the amount of damage caused by this violation of the law. It amounted to UAH 83,243,809. The inspectors filed a claim with the Kutske Forestry branch for voluntary compensation for the damage caused to the environment.
Photo: karpatireg.dei.gov.ua.
In addition, they sent a report about the detected crime to the law enforcement agencies.
What did the foresters answer?
A few days after the publication of this information, a refutation regarding the inspection by the State Environmental Inspection appeared on the Facebook page of the State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine". Yuriy Soima, director of the "Kutske Forestry" branch, said that they consider the results of the inspection to be biased, since "80% of the tree stumps specified in the acts are over 4-5 years old and show signs of aging." He said that representatives of the forest farm noted this in the objection to the inspection act.
"Stumps appeared even before the establishment of State Enterprise "Lisa Ukrainy", – added the director of the branch.
Photo: facebook.com/ForestsOfUkraine.
Photo: facebook.com/ForestsOfUkraine.
According to him, only a small part of the stumps are fresh. Yuriy Soyma also reported that during this year foresters discovered almost 500 illegally cut trees and handed over the materials to law enforcement agencies.
Photo: facebook.com/ForestsOfUkraine.
Separately, the director of the branch spoke about the unacceptable, in his opinion, situation with the firewood supply of the village of Kosmach, which borders the Kosmach Forestry. He said that in order to ensure the largest village in the Carpathians with a population of more than 7,000 people with firewood, Kosmatsky forestry received a limit of only 100 cubic meters from the beginning of the year. m. This is explained by the fact that forestry almost entirely belongs to the nature reserve fund.
"This causes constant "raids" of local residents on the forestry territory. Foresters act within their powers and cannot be responsible for the lack of decisions to provide the population with firewood for heating," Yuriy Soyma said.
Recently, EcoPolitic reported that, according to journalists of the Open Forest portal, private businessmen under the guise of a National Police official are illegally demolishing 50-year-old oaks near the Galagan family's palace and park complex in Chernihiv Oblast.
We also reported about the chief forester of Volyn Oleksandr Kvatyryk, who was accused by investigators of fraud with forestry lands.
