Ukraine needs to restore hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests lost as a result of hostilities and climate change.
This is a colossal job. We should hold it today, but the work of foresters is hindered by our bureaucratized legislation.
Just think about it, foresters have no right (!) to remove dead wood from fires. Clear areas where trees have dried up en masse, felled by storms, destroyed by artillery fire, in order to plant a young and healthy forest.
In 2017, Ukraine adopted the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment (hereinafter - Environmental Impact Assessment). Since that time, any sanitary measures with an area of more than 1 ha must undergo the appropriate procedure.
OVD is a very expensive thing. For the conclusion, state enterprises pay a private company hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of hryvnias.
The conclusion is not only very expensive, but also long-lasting. It takes months. During this time, the wood on the burners deteriorates and turns from commercial wood into firewood.
Taking into account the cost of the OVD conclusion, cleaning up the destroyed forest and planting new ones becomes unprofitable.
Therefore, in Kyiv region, Zhytomyr region and throughout the Polissia zone, we continue to observe the drying of pine trees affected by bark beetles, typographers, and other pests. The drying areas exceeded the area of more than 300 thousand hectares. In the Carpathians, driftwood trees planted on beeches are drying up en masse. The area of drylands reaches 200,000 hectares.
Under such conditions, foresters will not be able to restore completely destroyed forests in the East of the country. State funds are not provided for this, and this direction is unprofitable for farms!
The position of fellow ecologists: "if you don't restore it, that's fine, nature will sort itself out without humans, dead wood is also part of the ecosystem, dead wood gives life to fungi, insects and microorganisms."
I am very happy for the beetle larvae that need the dead wood. I am happy for the insect pests, which manage to produce offspring three times during the OVD, which fly to a distance of 300-500 meters and affect even healthy trees. But we, the people, need a country with healthy and high-quality forests! We need the wood not to spoil, but to give work to the economy. So that the state budget and the budgets of local communities receive income, and local residents receive jobs.
That is why the inter-factional association "Forest Restoration" registered the project of the Law on Amendments to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Effective Forest Management.
We suggest conducting the ATS procedure only where it is really needed. If the purpose of the site changes, a quarry is created instead of a forest, trees are cut down. The corresponding requirement is contained in Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and the Council.
We also propose to extend the OTD procedure to all main use cabins. In this case, it is clear why this is done.
But sanitary cuttings should not pass through OVD. This is nonsense that harms forestry, the economy, and the environment. In such cases, the decision of the commission on technogenic and environmental safety and emergency situations, which is open, public and can be monitored by the public, is sufficient.
In addition, our draft law for the first time introduces the legislative division of Ukrainian forests into natural zones - woodland, forest-steppe, steppe, Carpathians and mountainous Crimea.
The proposals were worked out in detail with the Ministry of Environment and approved by the relevant ministry.
We are not going to flirt with people who, during the war, earn millions from a procedure that only slows down the restoration of forests. After all, we are talking about very large-scale challenges that the forest industry simply cannot overcome according to the existing regulatory framework.
