In Ukraine, in 2022, it was possible to increase the area of the state forest fund by more than 20 thousand hectares at the expense of forests on agricultural lands and other territories.
About 12 hectares of new forests are self-sowing, the head of the State Forest Resources Agency Yuriy Bolokhovets reports on Facebook.
He said that in 2022, the State Forestry Agency sent requests to local authorities to join the forest fund of 77,000 hectares of territories. Land management projects have already been developed and cadastral numbers provided for 3,000 self-seeded forests from the transferred areas. Extracts from the register of property rights have already been received for 1.5 thousand hectares.
"Some of our forest farms show really impressive results," Bolokhovets said.
He said that in the Poltava forest farm, employees discovered 50 wooded plots of reserve land, with an area of 513 hectares, and managed to preserve the self-seeded forest.
In addition, the foresters of the Novgorod-Siversky forest farm, located in the Chernihiv region, received consent and produced documentation for 669 hectares of territory. Development of the land management project for another 925 hectares is also underway.
"Nature knows better than us how to ensure biodiversity, stability of ecosystems to negative climatic and other factors. In today's world, natural forests are a treasure that must be protected in order to bequeath it to future generations," said the head of the State Forestry Agency.
Bolokhovets noted that the land was planned to be leased to farmers, but the community led by the head of the Novgorod-Siver city council Lyudmila Tkachenko decided to preserve the forest.
"Novgorod-Siversk forestry works in very difficult conditions. Almost all forestry areas border the aggressor state. Shelling continues every day," he emphasized.
Bolokhovets also noted the active position and effectiveness of foresters of Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions.
"Unfortunately, there are still regions where the effectiveness of saving self-seeded forests is insufficient. We will certainly pay special attention to these regions. In Ukraine, there are almost a million hectares of self-seeded forest, and the task of preserving it is no less important than planting forests within the framework of the President's "Green Country" program," he added.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in the Kyiv region, they found about 102 thousand hectares of self-seeded forests, which can potentially be used to restore Ukrainian forests.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the introduction amendments to the Forest Reproduction Rules, which will regulate the preservation of self-seeded forests, meadows and pastures within the framework of the law "On the preservation of forests".
