New Forestry Law Risks Devastating City Woods

The Legislative Assembly passed a law on forestry in mid-March that grants any local citizen the right to cut down 15 cubic meters of timber from the city woods annually for heating needs, causing an outcry in the country's environmental circles.

The law also allows citizens to cut down up to 50 cubic meters of lumber for construction or renovation needs once every 10 years, and up to 15 cubic meters of wood for personal needs once every five years.

As ecologists in St. Petersburg have pointed out, the law, amazingly, sets no conditions under which citizens can claim their new rights. For instance, according to the law, people do not have to give any proof that they have an open fireplace at home when cutting down trees for heating purposes.

Governor Valentina Matviyenko has yet to sign off on the new law.

St. Petersburg boasts around 20,000 hectares of woodland within its municipal boundaries. Dmitry Artamonov, head of the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Greenpeace, has calculated that if just one percent of local citizens make use of the new opportunity, the city's forests will vanish within ten years.

Greenpeace argues that the new law creates perfect conditions for all sorts of "grey schemes" of cutting and selling wood.

Critics also say the law could ultimately help to vacate land for construction purposes, while leaving local residents powerless to fight such new construction. If citizens were to protest against the destruction of a local wood to make way for a construction project, for example, the authorities could simply send people claiming to want to exercise their right to obtain firewood, ecologists say.

Anastasia Filippova of the environmental organization Green Wave said the new law would create an ideal excuse for construction companies wishing to seize new land.

"It is obvious that the law was not passed in the interest of city residents: Can you imagine your neighbors marching down to the nearest wooded area to stock up on some wood for a chic new parquet floor?" Filippova said.

Alexander Karpov, head of the non-governmental St. Petersburg Center for Ecological Expertise, branded the legal initiative absurd, suggesting the move, if it comes into force, would lead to devastating consequences.

"The city risks losing its lungs - the vast and beautiful forest parks such as the Yuntolovsky, Rzhevsky and Novoorlovsky parks," Karpov warned. "As for the very idea of granting this right, it goes without saying that local residents don't need wood in such quantities."

As Artamonov points out, the new law was only recently made possible when Russia adopted its new Forestry Code, which allows regional authorities to establish the woodcutting norms for local residents.

The code has been heavily criticized by environmentalists and citizens across the country, who have argued that it appears to have been tailored to suit the interests of private business and the regional officials who oversee the forestry sphere.

The code has also left Russia's state foresters and forest wardens out of work, which has already led to massive illegal forest devastation and land seizures, Artamonov said. The situation in the Leningrad Oblast is one of the most alarming in Russia, along with the regions of Altai and the Far East, according to Greenpeace.

"Due to its location next to the Finnish border and its wealth of timber, the Leningrad Oblast has found itself in a precarious situation," said Alexander Yaroshenko, head of Greenpeace's Forestry program.

"The demand for timber is particularly high here, as is the temptation to get into the illegal business of unsanctioned logging. We have documented numerous cases of illegal land seizures and forest devastation here."

The local branch of Greenpeace and other environmental groups regularly receive hundreds of complaints from residents of the Leningrad Oblast as well as from St. Petersburg residents who have dachas, or summer cottages, outside the city.

Their letters complain of local woods being ravaged by illegal woodcutters and filling up with illegal garbage sites. Many hectares of local forests are cut down to make space for various kinds of construction sites, ecologists say.