Wildfires are raging across the country again. Like two years ago, when all living things burned in the fire, a handful of foresters on outdated equipment must fight them

Wildfires are raging again. Like two years ago, when all living things burned in the fire, a handful of foresters on outdated equipment must fight them

Forests are on fire again. According to Rosleskhoz estimates, more than a million hectares have been covered by fire (according to Greenpeace, about 10 million hectares). The Urals, Siberia and the Far East are especially affected. According to weather forecasts, a high, sometimes emergency fire danger is expected in Bashkiria, the Orenburg and Ulyanovsk regions and the Stavropol Territory. “It is necessary that no one relaxes,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting on abnormal heat. He called for the use of Putin's bell (renaming it a sleeper) to alert about fires and threatened to personally go to one of the affected regions.

Two years ago, after the fires of 2010, much was said about the revision of the Forest Code and the restoration of the forest protection service. According to the observations of foresters from the hinterland, nothing was done. The correspondent of "Novaya" visited the Marksovsky forestry (Saratov region), where two twenty-year-old tractors, a UAZ-"loaf" and five workers are ready to put out fires.

fire fighting tractor

The main fighter against fires can be heard from afar: a tattered tractor, rattling and clanging, plows the mine strip, overgrown with sparse grass. The car is over twenty years old. The pieces of iron of the plow are here and there tied with a yellow rope. “Native technique: what you can’t tie with wire, you can’t hold it with welding,” laughs the forester Sergey Tikhonov. For the entire territory (80 kilometers long and 150 kilometers wide) there are two such tractors, an UAZ and 300 liters of gasoline for six months. The forestry receives money for the prevention of fires according to the state order. As the foresters say, the amount is about half less than the real need - for example, there are no funds for spare parts.

A mobile group is ready to extinguish the fire - five workers of the forestry enterprise. I ask if there are volunteers. “Voluntary-compulsory,” Sergey Vladimirovich corrects. - At least 500 live rubles per day. In such a case, a reserve of money would be needed. But according to the law, you can't."

Thirty years ago there were 120 workers in the leshoz. The last time the states were cut in 2007, with the adoption of the Forest Code, twelve people were fired. The rest would also leave (the salary here does not exceed 7 thousand rubles), “but fortunately, there is nowhere” - the rural area does not indulge in a wide choice of employment.

The fewer hands in the forest, the longer the number of responsible persons involved in decision-making. “Here, as a forester, I see: in this place it is necessary to lay a mine strip. Before the reform, I would just send a tractor to tomorrow's planning meeting. But now forestry and leshoz are separated. The managerial function is mine, the tractor is his. I have to submit documents to the ministry, the Ministry of Transport will be included in the state assignment, put up for tender next year ... ".

There were no fires in the forest area this year. True, in the spring, when the juicy grass had not yet risen, and the sun was already hot, every day there were “fires” - this is when a fire breaks out in the neighborhood of the forest, on agricultural land. Foresters extinguished. I ask again why the owners of the fields do not do this. Tikhonov and his colleagues do not understand the question. This is how the world works: some burn the grass, others rake the consequences, why be surprised?

Cultural vacationers

We turn to a wooden gazebo. This is the so-called "equipped resting place", where there is a table and a poster with a reminder: "Fill the fire with water." There are two "basins" on the lawn with open trunks and doors, chanson is playing, tanned boys in shorts are at the table, a melon, a clear liquid in plastic bottles. Seeing correspondents with a camera and our reinforcements - people in uniform, the company fades. The inspector from the forestry ministry, a burly man in camouflage, quickly gives a lecture on the need to remove rubbish, carefully put out the fire, etc. Hands out leaflets with squirrels and owls to the beautiful half of the company. The guys are relieved. “I would like to remind you of administrative responsibility ...” - a policeman comes to the table from the other side.

The forest ranger has the right to draw up an administrative protocol against a scavenger or arsonist. A surname is required for the record. The forester does not have the authority to detain the offender and take him to the police for identification. The violation must then be proven in court. The fine is 500 rubles.

Tikhonov “patrols vacationers” every weekend (when he talks to his superiors about a vacation, the authorities are surprised: you’ve been on picnics for half your life already!). According to the observations of the forester, in recent years, residents have begun to treat the forest in a bestial way: “When my family and I come to relax, we bring one bag of food with us. And we leave with two or three bags of someone else's garbage collected from the clearing. This summer, unknown people appeared in Tikhonov's "zone of responsibility" and got into the habit of dumping entire trucks of rubbish into the forest. Waste is packed in identical plastic bags. The forester suspects tenants of recreation centers: it is unprofitable for them to pay for the use of a special landfill. If Tikhonov is lucky enough to track them down, the scavengers will have to pay a fine of 200,000 rubles and, the forester adds wistfully, "clean up the landfill with their own hands."

Sawfly and budget

After the fires of 2010, two burnt areas remained in the Marksovsky forestry: almost 25 hectares of pine, poplar and elm. The dead trees were offered to residents for firewood at a symbolic price of eight rubles per cubic meter. The villagers cut down only eight hectares. Unprofitable: overhead costs for transport, a chainsaw, etc. amount to 1.5 thousand rubles. This year, the federal budget allocated money to the region for clearing 100 hectares of burnt areas. About 2,000 hectares of trees that died in 2010 from crown fires still stand.

“Firstly, this is a laid out fire, one spark is enough. Secondly, it is a breeding ground for pests,” says Tikhonov.

According to experts, almost 24,000 hectares of forest in the region are affected by pests and fungal infections. Foresters warned about the possibility of epidemic outbreaks two years ago, because the trees are weakened after fires. This year, the budget financed the spraying of 238 hectares of pine in the Lysogorsky district.

Officially, experts explain that the forests in the Saratov region are difficult to cultivate, because there is a "high degree of urbanization." I ask, how do they deal with pests in Europe, where the population is even denser? “They prefer not chemistry, but preventive measures - cleaning the forest from clutter, birdhouses, resettlement of ants.” This year, the money allocated to the Marx forestry for "biotechnical measures" was enough for 50 birdhouses. To achieve the effect, you need to hang five pieces per hectare, in total there are more than 14 thousand hectares.

The investor reaches for the water

The closer to the Volga, the more often fences of camp sites are visible on the sides of the road. Marksovsky district is, by the standards of the region, a resort area.

We pass a stylized gate with the inscription “Volga Recreation Area. IP Shevchuk. Behind the bushes are tents, socks and swimming trunks are dried on the ropes, from somewhere there is a smell of shish kebab. Tourists say that they pay 150 rubles a day to put up a tent (their own) here, good places need to be booked six months in advance. From the grove we go out to a wide beach, on the other side of the Volga there are chalk cliffs of stunning beauty.

“Forty kilometers along the coast there is no free space. If the legislation changes a little, our children will not be able to even come up to wet their feet,” Sergei Vladimirovich eagerly examines the river. Now about 200 hectares of forest have been leased in the Marksovsky District. 56 tenants are engaged in recreational business, eight more are the so-called "line users" (gas workers, oilmen, power engineers, whose facilities pass through the forest area).

It seems that the Forest Code was conceived in this way: business came to the forest, occupied commercially attractive plots, and the territories, “unusable” for private traders, should be served by the forestry enterprise at the expense of the state. But the state doesn't need it. Without naming names and lowering their voices, foresters on the banks of the Volga reveal their conclusions: “The pipe was sold, power plants, land. Now it has come to the forest. Taiga with good timber will go into the right hands. And what is unprofitable - burn with a blue flame.

Tikhonov has been in the profession for fifteen years. “I studied at the forest faculty and had no idea that I would work in the forest for so little time. It takes six hours a day to report!” He remembers by heart how many hectares of minefields were laid and plowed for the first time, subjected to biotechnical measures, maintenance, etc. "These seven figures I paint in 24 tables." When modernization came to the forest industry and computers were brought in, things got worse: now documents need to be prepared both in paper and electronic form.

Photo: Vera SALMANOVA