In Ukraine, territorial communities returned 11.4 thousand hectares of self-seeded natural forests to the forest fund of the country within two months.
Such forests grow in several decades on lands removed from agricultural use, they are more resistant to droughts and pests, writes the head of the State Forestry Agency Yuriy Bolokhovets in his blog on LB.ua
He said that, according to the estimates of various experts, there are approximately 500,000 hectares of self-seeded forests in Ukraine, which are not officially considered forests.
Their legalization became possible thanks to the adoption of the Law "On Preservation of Forests" in June 2022. Now the territorial bodies of the State Forestry Agency can apply to territorial communities or military administrations with a request for the transfer of forested areas.
Bolokhovets explained that after the community's consent to the transfer of such a forest, the State Forestry Agency draws up documents on the change in the status of the land and begins to take care of it. After all, usually in such a forest, no one, as a rule, is engaged in forestry management. It is cluttered and is very often the source of fires that spread to other forest areas.
The State Forestry Agency sent more than 1,600 applications with a proposal to transfer plots with a total area of almost 42,000 hectares to the forest fund.
However, not every community supported such a proposal. For example, in the Chernivtsi region, only 7 responses were received to 37 requests (all negative). Such answers were sent by communities of Kyiv region, but none came from Dnipro region.
However, the initiative was supported in other regions. Thus, Poltava region sent positive responses regarding the transfer of 1.4 thousand hectares, Mykolaiv region – 874 hectares, Volyn – 2.6 thousand hectares. The initiative was also actively supported in Zhytomyr region, Chernihiv region, and Khmelnytskyi region.
Property rights have already been registered for 1.2 thousand hectares, the processing of documents for other plots is ongoing.
"In the future, more active support of the campaign to save self-seeded forests is needed from the local authorities. We are ready to consider various options, – writes Bolokhovets. – The main thing is to save the forest, it seems to me that all parties should be interested in this."
He also emphasized that, in addition to ecological aspects of forest conservation, economic ones also play an important role. After all, it takes time and money to grow a forest "from scratch", but you can preserve the forest that nature gave.
The State Forestry Agency plans to continue applying to communities. After all, a new analysis of space images showed that since 2010, 1.5 million hectares of new forests and protective plantations have grown in the country.
"At the end of the year, we will definitely compile a rating of the regions regarding the efficiency of work to save "nobody's" forests. And we will reward the winners," said Bolokhovets.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that on June 20 Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine approved draft law No. 5650 in the second reading "On amendments to certain legislative acts regarding forest conservation".
As EcoPolitic previously reported, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a resolution that provides reforming the forest industry, in particular, the unification of 158 state forest farms into a single enterprise "Forests of Ukraine".
