“Black loggers”, cutting down ‘excess’ forest and ‘illegal-legal’ logging are the 3 main schemes for illegal timber harvesting in Ukraine.
This was discussed by environmental experts Dmytro Karabchuk (NGO “Forest Initiatives and Society”) and Mykhailo Bohomaz (WWF-Ukraine) in a conversation with the Telegraph.
Here is a list of scenarios under which millions of cubic meters of wood are illegally cut down in Ukraine every year.
Scheme No. 1 – "Black Lumberjacks"
This is when harvesting crews come to the forest without any legal permits, quickly cut down trees, and just as quickly take them to their sawmill (sometimes also illegal), where they cut them into boards or firewood.
There may be an option when they deliver the wood to another customer, for example, a furniture company with which they have previously concluded an agreement. Dmytro Karabchuk believes that “black loggers” currently account for about 30% of all illegal logging in Ukraine.
The expert said that such logging is usually organized at the highest technological level.
"If we talk about high-quality "black lumberjacks", they are currently divided into several groups. The first link goes into the forest and chooses trees that suit them, for example, a beautiful oak. They see that there is an approach to that oak, that it is of good quality, and mark it with fluorescent paint that glows at night. The next brigade arrives, conditionally, at midnight. She has the GPS coordinates of that tree, finds it, uses her night goggles to check the tag, cuts it down, and cuts it into pieces. The third brigade – arrives in the morning on a truck. He loads these logs and takes them to the customer or to his own processing plant, sawmill. And at each of these stages, law enforcement officers or forest guards have either nothing to show at all, or something insignificant. Paint is not punished at all. And if they even catch you sawing a tree, that's a fine, a maximum of several thousand hryvnias, and administrative responsibility. And there can be 20 or 100 such "administrative responsibilities" per year," the expert explains the situation.
Dmytro Karabchuk also said that earlier ecologists proposed to introduce an amendment to the Criminal Code of Ukraine so that in the presence of three facts of participation in illegal logging, criminal liability would arise, but it was never introduced.
Scheme No. 2 – Earnings from "excess" forest
With such a scheme, forestry officials on the ground take advantage of the fact that in practice it is very difficult to control the amount of felling. Therefore, trees intended for official harvesting are cut down in the presence of a logging ticket and all other permits, and 10, 20, or even all 50% of the "extra" wood is unofficially added to them overtime.
According to experts, the "official" forest is then sold through official channels – it is sold through stock exchanges, supplied under previously concluded contracts. But the "surplus" is sold "on the left" and provides profit to the participants and organizers. According to Karabchuk, this scheme also currently accounts for about 30% of illegal timber harvesting.
"Large enterprises can often profit from such a scheme. When part of their wood is bought legally, at an auction, and a certain percentage – 20-30% – is added to the unaccounted for products, which are then mixed with the legally purchased ones," explains Karabchuk.
Scheme No. 3 – "Illegal-legal" logging
It is the most common – 40% of "shadow" wood is obtained precisely through it. For this purpose, fictitious "sanitary" cuttings are used. Formally, they are aimed at forest protection. When, for example, a tree is sick, and to ensure the safety of neighboring trees, it must be removed.
According to ecologists, Ukrainian foresters often put completely healthy trees under the guise of sick ones.
"The documents for such a forest seem to be completely legal. There is a logging ticket, which is the only legal permit for legal felling, all other permit documents that are necessary for issuing this logging ticket. But the grounds that served to make the decision to cut down this forest , are falsified. It is clear that it is impossible to do this without the participation of corrupt forestry workers," says Karabchuk.
"If we take the general picture, it turns out that the forest in Ukraine is not just sick, but mega-sick. Because today, according to the general picture of forest use in Ukraine, about half of our wood (over the last 5 years in total) is harvested by sanitary felling," adds Mykhailo Bogomaz
A separate significant problem mentioned by both experts is the cutting down of the so-called “no man's land”. This is the forest that for some reason is not assigned to any forest user. According to Dmytro Karabchuk, if we talk about the whole of Ukraine, we can talk about 700 thousand hectares of such forests. Mykhailo Bohomaz suggests that the area may be even larger – from 1.2 million to 1.5 million hectares. Such forests also include forest belts whose ownership is not organized.
As an example of scheme No. 3, the experts mentioned the case in Khmelnytskyi region recently published by the State Bureau of Investigation, which was previously reported by EcoPolitic. The head of the South-Western Interregional Forestry and Hunting Department, the deputy director of the Yarmolynetske Forestry branch, and the chief engineer of the Letychivske Forestry branch were suspected of illegally cutting down 3.3 hectares of forest worth more than UAH 6.5 million.
