In Ukraine, in 2022, the courts returned 65 hectares of illegally seized land to national natural parks (NPPs).
Currently, another 23 similar cases are being considered in courts, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources reports on Facebook.
The press service noted that among the returned protected lands were:
- 42.2 hectares – to the landscape reserve of national importance "Kamensky coastal and river complex" in the Dnipro region;
- 10.8 hectares – NPP "Homilshan Forests" in Kharkiv Oblast;
- 10 hectares – NPP "Nizhnyosulskyi" in Poltava and Cherkasy regions;
- 1.6 hectares – NPP "Karpatskyi" in Iano-Frankivsk region;
- 0.3 hectares – NPP "Holosiivskyi" in Kyiv.
"Mindovkillya will continue to actively cooperate with law enforcement agencies to protect the nature reserves of Ukraine," the message emphasized.
The press service said that currently the Ministry of Environment and the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office have established effective cooperation regarding the effective representation of the state's interests in courts and the provision of relevant information to ensure procedural guidance in criminal proceedings in the field of environmental protection.
The authors added that in 2022, a joint order of the Office of the Prosecutor General, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service, the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food approved the Procedure for interaction between the prosecutor's office, the National Police, the SBU, authorized bodies of state supervision (control), state specialized institutions under the time of detection and pre-trial investigation of criminal offenses against the environment.
They emphasized that the nature reserve fund of Ukraine is a national treasure and an important part of the world system of nature conservation areas, which must be preserved for future generations.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in Vinnytsia, the State Bureau of Investigation reported suspicion to a forester from Yampil Forestry of State Enterprise "Zhmeryn Forestry" for plowing 14 hectares of the nature reserve. It was part of the plan creation of a private hunting ground.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, Kyiv City Council refused to create a number of ecologists, activists, and the military opposed the national memorial military cemetery in the Lysa Gora protected tract.
