Forest Club model projects and sites

FOREWORD

At the turn of the millennia the humankind faced a problem of growing scale of illegal forest felling. The present material refers to violations of forestry and environmental protection legislation, as well as respective international conventions. In some countries the volumes of illegally cut wood have become comparable to the scale of legal forest felling operations. For example, in Indonesia in late 90's official volumes of logged wood were 25 - 28 million m3 and volumes of illegally logged wood - somewhere between 17 and 30 million m3 (Natural Resources Management Program, Jakarta). In other countries the authorities are getting involved in organization of such illegal wood logging. Recent research carried out in the framework of the 'Global Forest Watch' project in Cameroon, showed that illegal concessions were granted by authorities of the highest levels. Some researchers dealing with the forestry complex in Brazil, believe that up to 80% of timber in the Amazon is logged illegally. Illegal cuttings frequently take place not only in tropical forests, but in boreal forests as well. For example, due to the lack of the Canadian Forestry Service controlling forests in the country, cases of overlogging for instance, in the British Columbia, have gone far enough from being rare. There are cases when illegal forest felling operations were found in protected natural territories in Poland and Belarus. Unfortunately, in Russia illegal wood logging has become a usual thing, and in some regions the share of illegal timber in the total turnover of logged wood is getting more and more significant. The purpose of the present survey is to sum up the data on illegal forest felling operations violating forestry legislation. Other types of legislation have been touched upon, too, but very slightly. However, even this rough analysis shows that at least 20% of timber in Russia is getting logged either illegally or severely violating the existing legislation.

What is the result of illegal wood logging? Besides all the damage to the environment, illegal logging results in losses for the budget and corruption. It also blackens the image of the Russian forest industry, because today none of the companies buying Russian timber can be 100% sure that all the wood they buy has been logged in conformity with the law.

Unlike many countries of the world, Russia has quite sophisticated forestry legislation and, what is even more important, a specific method for implementing this legislation. From certain points of view, Russia's forestry legislation is redundant and regulates even those forestry aspects that in many other countries are left at the disposal of local forestry workers (foresters and managers). Sophistication and redundancy of the legislation determine variety and the severity and extent of forestry violations or, in other words, forms and methods of illegal felling activities.

Speaking about illegal cuttings in Russia, we use a definition of this notion given in Resolution #14 of the Russian Federation Supreme Court of December 5, 1998. As stated to wit: 'Illegal forest felling operation (cutting) is cutting of trees, bushes and lianas without a felling ticket, order of cutting with a felling ticket, order issued with abuse of the existing cutting-practice rules, as well as cutting carried out at the wrong site or beyond a site's borders, exceeding the set quantities, cutting of wrong species or of trees, bushes and lianas that are not subject to cutting…'. We should point out here that this definition is related to the procedure of application of Article 260 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code by court. A deed becomes subject to punishment when the damages imposed exceed a particular amount (20 or 200 floor wages). However, the Rules of On-Stump Wood Allocation in Russian forests (hereinafter referred to as the Wood Allocation Rules or WAR, endorsed by Russian Federation Governmental Resolution #551 of June 6, 1998) set up fines for many of the violations. If paid, these fines save a trespasser from criminal prosecution, despite the fact that the imposed damage is large enough to become subject to the Criminal Code. This is a large loophole to avoid punishment for very serious violations. In such a situation, the volume and number of violations constantly grows, especially in those cases when official penalties are less than the profit that one can gain. Compounding the problem is the fact that, in most cases, the agencies entitled to supervise different aspects of forestry work separately from one another. Moreover, their activities (and conclusions) often contradict one another. All this is further incentive to forest crimes and, in particular, to illegal cuttings. An integration of all controlling bodies into one ministry will make the control of logging operations much weaker due to the specific practice of violations outlined below.

Illegal cuttings can be divided into two large categories:

cuttings carried on without permits or with forged permits;

cuttings with official permits (felling tickets, orders for low-amount allocation) which, in and of themselves, cannot guarantee that the felling is legal.

Each of these large groups consists of a wide range of variants. Clearly, the classification given below is relative and each case is quite difficult to be defined by a particular scheme, especially if the case, as it very often happens, is comprised of a number of violations simultaneously.