Forest Club model projects and sites

Issue 11, Aug. 1999

After felling at areas with high slope angles erosion can be disastrous. Photo by V. Kantor

In the beginning of summer 1999, State Environmental Committee of the Sakhalin region together with officials from Federal Environmental Committee and representatives of Greenpeace of Russia and public organization "Sakhalin Environmental Watch" carried out the first in regional history checking of compliance of intermediate felling, conducted by district forestry enterprises of the Sakhalin Forestry Management with legislation.

Certainly before Committee undertook attempts to conduct similar incpections, however, their results were then sent to the Forestry Management, which later informed that the facts were not confirmed and everything remained unchanged.

The main reasons were firstly lack of specialists at the Environmental committee, who were capable to conduct the checking, as well as lack of time. The other important obstacle was negative attitude of Forest Management officials towards the checking. They did not recognize rights of any State bodies to check their felling operations and felling sites.

The situation changed when young experts appeared in the staff of the Regional Committee, who had forestry management experience. However, due to the absence of operational experience they could not provide effective control over felling operations from the very beginning.

The conference on problems of forest exploitation served as an incitement to activation of this work. The conference was organized by Greenpeace of Russia and "Sakhalin Environmental Watch". During the conference, its participants and representatives of Forestry Management visited several felling sites including sites of Anivskiy forest district administration. Site checking revealed numerous breaches of existing rules and normative, which even Forestry Management officials recognized.

The most serious breaches were usage of natural water courses for laying out of logging roads and skidding at steep slopes, which led to strong soil erosion, rivers and streams siltation, degradation and elimination of spawning grounds of valuable fish species.

Regulations of final felling operations and Directions on improvement cutting in the forests of Far East ban skidding on the slopes with slope angle more than 20°. However, this ban is easily avoided in practice. A forester compiles an Act of Slope angle Measurement and project logways on the logging claim where he writes down that the slope angle is less than 20° (for example, 19°). In the situation where there was no outside control over felling operations that worked rather well.

According to officials of State Environmental Committee of the Sakhalin Region, similar violations are typical for many forest enterprises. In this connection, they were offered to carry out a joint checking of renewal cuttings together with representatives of non-governmental organizations on the territory of South-Sakhalin forest district administration. The previous checking revealed similar violations there, however, the Forestry Administration did not take any actions.

On May, 31st, the South-Sakhalin forestry district administration was informed about the checking and the next day the checking commission consisting of 3 officials of State Environmental Committee of Sakhalin region, an expert of Federal Environmental Committee, 2 specialists from Russian "Greenpeace" and an expert from "Sakhalin Environmental Watch", who was a public environmental inspector of the Sakhalin region, came to the Forestry administration office. After introduction with the documentation, the commission together with the Chief forester and a forest officer of the New-Alexandrov forest district started for the felling sites.

The checking had several objectives: to measure slope angles where the felling took place according to slope-terrace technique (in order to measure slopes angle a geodesist from the Sakhalin research institute was invited); to check compliance of amount of felling tress declared in the felling contract with the real amount of already cut off trees; to check the quality of the logging claim allocation (marking, compliance of cut trees to the tally sheet, delimitation of the logging claim).

Checking of the documentation revealed some interesting details.

The project of the forest regulation for this Forestry district did not pass State Environmental Expertise, however, it was approved in 1997 (after Federal Law "On Environmental Expertise" was issued. According to the chapter 12 of the Federal Law, all projects of forest regulation are subject to obligatory state environmental expertise, conducted at the level of the region of the Russian Federation).

The felling contract for the renewal cutting was issued for the New-Alexandrov forestry district. According to the chapter 104 of the Federal Forestry Code, these felling operations are not imposed to forest taxes, moreover, the forest districts are free of taxes. However, the development of the logging claim on the territory of New-Alexandrov forestry district was conducted by "Anles. Ltd." according to the contract signed on 16.12.98. According to the contract the Forestry district gave 50% of fresh wood to "Anles"Ltd. as a payment for work and the rest had sold to the same company at the price of $11 per cubic meter (according to the expert of Forestry Management, buying price of the best quality plank timber is about to $110-120 in Japan). It was interesting that the responsibility for any violations of law during felling operations was designated to the "Ànles" according to the contract, however, this contract item was against existing legislation. It is necessary to mention that without taking into account the above-mentioned violations, all the felling documantation was ideal.

However, felling sites checking revealed complete non-compliance of the forest allocation documentation with the real situation. For example, when timber was released "by stumps" the logging claim was allocated without prior tree marking which was violation of the Directions on allocation and evaluation of logging claims within forests of Russian Federation. The direct measurement of the slope angles showed that within the limits of the logging claim (including slopes with laid out logways) there were sites with slope angles from 24 to 31° which brought the legitimacy of logging claim allocation into doubt. When developing the logging block, the logways were laid out , which were not indicated on the exploitation map, including one logway - along the stream course. As the result, the stream channel was filled up with ground and felling residue. Some of the trees were cut outside the limits of the logging claim. The visual checking sowed the real volume of the fresh wood exceed the volume indicated in the felling contract, so complete stumps counting was conducted in order to estimate real quantity of cut trees.

It is necessary to outline that the employees of the Forest District Administration refused to take part in the measurements and even left the felling site, expressing lack of any respect to the officials of State Environmental Checking bodies. Nevertheless, all the necessary measurements were carried out , and their results indicated the following:

According to the tally sheet of the forest enterprise, diameters of the cut down trees should be within limits of thickness for spruce from 24 to 36 sm and from 20 up to 32 sm for the Sakhalin fir-tree. The deciduous root timber was not released.