"The case comes to stabbing"

On Sunday night, February 17, in the Altai village of Verkh-Biysk, the house of Vladimir Shvetsov, a local resident actively resisting forest cutting in the vicinity of his village and Tauritsky Lake, burned down . The activist is sure that it was arson . The day before, he stood in a picket near the building of the Embassy in Novosibirsk and handed over to the Presidential Presidential Representative to Sergei Sibfo Chanyilo a collective appeal to Putin with a request to stop cutting forests in his region. A wave of protests against cutting and exporting forests from Siberian and Far Eastern regions to China swept over the past months in several cities and regions. People go to rallies against “Chinese expansion”, collect signatures under petitions , demanding to introduce a moratorium on the export of forests, and simply post on their pages in social networks of publication that the Chinese gave a million hectares of forest in the Far East, which is why the eastern regions of the country turn into a desert. In the photo and video there are long warehouses and endless compositions with wood, obviously abroad.

"Gray schemes are convenient to the authorities"

The social activist, writer and traveler Pavel Pashkov (resident of Moscow, a native of Altai) chose, perhaps, the most unusual form of protest. In the spring he will go on an expedition "Russian Taiga", which will pass through territories where the forest is cut down on an industrial scale and where it is exported to China.

- I'm going to make a film about the mass destruction of forests. The collection of materials for him and the film itself should become the result of the expedition, ”said Pashkov to the correspondent Siberia. Real. - Forests are cut down by Chinese companies that rented millions of hectares for 49 years, but against this background of the administration of settlements in Siberia and in the Far East they began to engage in forests in black, even cut down by reserves and sell the same Chinese. So the problem is in us. The situation is still closed, the information comes from people, I will verify personally what and how. They are already threatened, they promised that I would not leave the taiga. But my task is to collect as much information as possible, so that, having reliable data, it is possible to beat off the forests.

On his page, Pavel published a video made using satellite shooting. “Here you can see on what scale the Chinese cut down the forests of Siberia and the Far East. This is really a desert,” Pashkov explains.

The petition "We demand to introduce a moratorium on cutting and export of forests from Russia", which was recently sent to the President of the Russian Federation, collected more than 146 thousand signatures on the network. Another 30 thousand inhabitants of the Siberian regions made signatures under this appeal in special points opened in their cities. The author of the petition, the Irkutsk social activist Olga Zhakova, says: the lines of those who wanted to subscribe to the document were built near the points.

It is enough to look at the cosmias to understand: there are no forests in some territories, only hemps

- It all started a few years ago, when our forests were burning, and the federal center closed his eyes to this. Since 2013, we have burned out 500 thousand hectares of forest annually. The authorities actually worked out money on this - they ordered planes that actually did not extinguish anything from us, the forest was burning and continued to burn, ”says Olga Zhakova . - Then, when a wave of indignation went in the region, the authorities fussed. And now we have a smaller fire area, about 300 thousand hectares per year. But the forests began to cut down more. Sanitary cabin is paid from the federal and regional budgets, and under the guise of it in local forestry, absolutely healthy trees are chopped on an industrial scale.

Olga gives an example: not so long ago, the criminal case of the head of the Ust-Udinsky forestry was sent to the court-there, hiding behind the need for a sanitary cutting, they destroyed healthy trees on an area of 83 hectares. The damage amounted to 170 million rubles.

- It is enough to look at the cosmias to understand: in some territories there is no forest, only hemp. But it is still impossible to say that this is the work of Chinese loggers, ”said Olga Zhakova. - If Chinese entrepreneurs here use the gray schemes and services of our black lumberjacks, they are not to blame, but the local authorities who allow this, or even themselves interested in a similar situation. You have to hear manipulative statements like: people have nothing in the villages, so they go to the "gray" Chinese enterprises, so even if they earn there. So, after all, already in black lumberjacks, the technique is idle - there is no forest around. But their hands are their head in place. Why not open timber processing enterprises in the region and not give people work on them?

Zhakova emphasizes: the petition is directed not so much against the export of forest as such (by the way, besides China, he also goes to Mongolia and France), but against thoughtless export. It refers to the numbers of the Irkutsk Ministry of Forestry: an average of 35 million cubic meters of forest per year is cut down in the region, of which only 15 million are processing, and 20 million for export in the form of a round. That is, in the form of raw materials - both cut down and taken.

In our region, the case comes to stabbing: the locals are fighting on sawmills with the Chinese

- Selling a circle abroad (no matter where exactly) is absurd. We, Siberians, go to China and there we buy furniture from our own forest (more precisely, from wood sawdust), instead of exporting normal products, ”says Zhakova. -By the way, the government of the Irkutsk region last year managed to introduce a moratorium on the export of unprocessed wood. But this decision was quickly canceled - it did not arrange too many, the region’s leadership simply could not withstand this pressure.

At the same time, Olga Zhakova himself does not really believe in the effectiveness of the "Irkutsk petition":

“But you can’t be silent.” If only because in our region the case comes to stabbing: the locals are fighting on sawmills with the Chinese, they are beaten by allegedly firewalls of the forest (having figured out who is actually guilty). Soon, God forbid, and they will attack tourists. I don’t know if the effect of the petition will be. But we, at least, in the framework of the law, did everything we could.

Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation, the total area of land in Russia, on which forests are located, is 1.2 billion hectares - 20% of the total area of world forests and the first place in the world in a share in the total area of the state. At the same time, 43% of the forest area (more than 500 million hectares) and 33% of wood reserves in Russia (24.7 billion cubic meters) account for the Far East and Transbaikalia.

That is, even if we assume that the Chinese really leased a million hectares of forest (it is these data that appear in Internet posts most often)-this is only one thousandth from the area of Russian forests. Another figure is often mentioned: for a year, 12.8 million cubic meters of forest were taken from Russia for a year. For comparison: in the Krasnoyarsk Territory alone in 2017, the total volumes of logging were almost twice as much - almost 24 million cubic meters.

So where do the “lunar landscapes” come from in the place of Siberian forests and from whom should they really be protected?

"The forest has no owners now"

There are violations of logging rules now in all Siberian regions, according to Alexander Onuchin , director of the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Forest SB RAS, Doctor of Biological Sciences. And the "national affiliation" of tenants of forest plots does not play a role here.

- The problem is the lack of control. If earlier we had a numerous army of foresters, now changes in forest legislation have led to the fact that their number has decreased sharply, ”says Alexander Onuchin. - I know: I used to come to the forest - I will be met by a forester, I am interested in where and for what purpose I am going to go, warns of a fire hazardous situation, etc. Now this is not. And one of the consequences is the growth of illegal cutting. And this is even worse than violations for legal logging. There at least somehow the cutting are cleaned. And with illegal triggers, when two of the highest quality lower cuts are taken from the trees, and the entire tops and thin meters remain on the cutting plates, there are prerequisites for the emergence of large forest fires. In this regard, the situation in the Krasnoyarsk Territory is not too different from what is happening in other Siberian regions.

And Viktor Reshetnikov , the head of the Planet Taiga project (Khabarovsk Territory), says: he has repeatedly faced cases when foresters not only do not follow the order in their territories, but also cover the violators.

The forest sphere is quite corrupt

“It's no secret that the salaries of the foresters are very low,” says Viktor Reshetnikov. - But you go to the village during the expedition, you see - two good houses are on the whole village, nearby - very decent cars. Whose? One house is the head of the village, and the other is a forester. I ask people: where does such and such a salary come from? But everyone understands everything. In the jurisdiction of a forester is a huge territory in which several logging customers work. And he is one master and a master for thousands of square kilometers. And if there is some kind of conflict with the legislation of lumberjacks, if they want to take an extra pile of a good forest or cut it out until ripe, or in some way to break the norms, all these issues will be solved by a forester. He is too great the temptation to go to the offer of loggers. And this happens everywhere.

Alexander Onuchin is sure: the forest should have a master, ideally - competent and qualified. And of course, responsible and honest. Only this will save the situation.

Nobody seized our territories, I have not seen long foreign warehouses with the forest anywhere, although I went around our entire region

- The forest sphere is quite corrupt, I am not afraid to say it. People often come to it who used to work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, have connections and close their eyes to many violations, says OUCHIN. - An example is a recent situation with Krivinsky Bor under Minusinsky. There, we can say, the violators of the lace-rubles were caught by the hand, they fled, throwing unbearable bonfires, and they could not find them guilty. The same was in the experimental farm "Pogorelsky Bor". Until I put a forester there, the trees were cut down with impunity: people arrived, loaded the timber industry, took them away - and this happened regularly. You come - one top is lying around, and the trunks are all taken out. The forester caught such black lumberjacks a couple of times. It seems that they can’t really be presented to them: the lumberjack and the driver say that they work under the contract, they were hired, but they allegedly do not know the stolen forest or not. But it would be enough to remove equipment and cargo from them several times so that illegal cutting stops.

It is physically difficult to control what is happening in the forests. So, now the norm for patrolling for one official is 9.7 thousand hectares. At the same time, the department leads the example of Buryatia, where in fact, one employee has an area of 180.1 thousand hectares for patrolling, and this is with a lack of special equipment. What kind of control and management of forests can be discussed in such cases, are experts wondering?

- Nobody seized our territories, nowhere I saw long foreign warehouses with the forest, although I went around our entire region. Problems in the forest industry were and remain, but they are not in the Chinese, but in our Russian heads, ”says Viktor Reshetnikov. - What are we - taiga, travelers, tourists - see when we go to the forest? Yes, a complete mess and the absence of the owner. There is no concern for the forests either from the state or from the side of the foresters.

Foresters, and our Russian, including, if they comply with more or less some requirements for preserving the forest, then only those whose failure can seriously punish. And from the rest they dodge.

- Warring remnants - branches, peaks, hollow parts - are thrown. Logaries are drank the business part, they must be disposed of the rest by law on the spot or export. But I have never seen someone to do it. Everything is abandoned where the equipment worked, ”says Viktor Reshetnikov. - Hence the fires and diseases of the forest. There is such a disaster. Here is a camp of loggers. They move quite quickly from place to place. And what is left behind is just barbarism, savagery. Everyone throws everything-barrels with fuel remnants, rusty, failed spare parts, some empty cylinders, household garbage ... All this enters the ground, into the water.

Victor says: during one of the expeditions, they wanted to get water and friends in a taiga stream. And on the water - rainbow stains. We got up a little higher - and there the abandoned parking lots, and from the barrels slowly diesel fuel in a stream flowing into a stream.

- I am not against loggers, this is the right business. But it is necessary to change the approaches, legislation in this area. There are no other problems other than irrational, careless, boorish attitude to our resources. And without rebooting in the heads, there is no need to wait for changes.

In addition, the tenants of forest plots, adds Alexander Onuchin, most often there are not enough elementary knowledge: what to do so that the forests are restored, how to properly protect them from fires, etc. And most often they have no normal technology in order to take care of young animals, nor high -quality planting material.

"I don't know how these people live"

The protests of recent times are caused not only by deforestation of the forest, but also by the work of timber processing enterprises in Siberia and in the Far East.

After the terrible fires that occurred in the Krasnoyarsk Territory last spring (Kansk and Lesosibirsk were most affected - dozens of houses burned there), the residents of Kansk sent appeals to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping. People asked to put things in order with the work of sawmills - it was from their territories that a fire began, which destroyed 78 houses in Kansk. In a city with a hundred thousandth population, 110 sawmills work. The owners of most of them are Chinese citizens.

At the end of January this year, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court - for the umpteenth time! -Drived by the Kansk sawmill company "Sin-i", which caused the fire, to remove sawdust from the territory. It turns out that all this time the company not only continued to work, but even did not clean its section from waste.

The justice of ordinary people does not concern. And no one thinks about the forest. It's good that in our region there are still forests where people have not reached

Previously, long before the fires, this and other enterprises, the regulations of the supervisory authorities were issued: the owners of the sawmills were demanded to dispose of the sawdust accumulated in the territories and constantly widened. Entrepreneurs managed to ignore the requirements. After large May fires in Kansk, several criminal cases were brought up at once on different articles - from negligence and abuse of powers to receiving bribes. Their defendants were a senior employee of the local Ministry of Emergencies, the head of the Kansk customs, the bailiff. And finally, the mayor of the city. All of them either personally patronized the owners of sawmills, or turned a blind eye to what was happening.

- The question is not whether Chinese are firms or Russian. And not even whether they work legally or not. The most important thing is that in this regard the city authorities and supervisory authorities make. In Kansk for several years, the issue of equipment of a special landfill is acute for several years, there is also a court decision that orders the city authorities to solve the problem. And the money from the regional budget was allocated for this. But the point from the dead point has not moved, ”says Vladimir Makarov, deputy of the Cannes City Council.

But another example is this time without the participation of Chinese business. But about forest processing. On the page on the social network, residents of the Boguchansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory also complain about sawdust, smoldering on the territory of the local forestry processing complex (LPK)

"Sawdles are burning on the territory of the Boguchansky LPC. Despite the numerous appeals of activists, despite the suffering of people who are forced to sleep on the floor due to smoke that enveloped all the surroundings. Despite the terrible example of last year's fires in the country and the country. Why cannot the region’s leadership solve this long-term problem? Moreover, the lands on which are stored (and burned) sawdust, sawdust, sawdust, sawdust They belong to the son of the head of the district.

There are such problems in the Far Eastern regions. Including in the Khabarovsk Territory.

- With the deposits of sawdust, entrepreneurs simply do not know what to do. They lie, rot, smolder. I can name at least three villages, inside of which there are such waste mountains, ”says Viktor Reshetnikov. “I don't know what people breathe there.” And as the heads of these villages admit that they have children, the old people who breathe this live like this. Over these villages in the summer I could not just - there is darkness. At the same time, loaded timber trucks scurry past the villages, everyone understands that this is a business with multimillion -dollar revolutions and that on such a scale to solve the problems of these villages is a trifle business. But they do not dare. And the business is our, Russian, not Chinese. And the villages are also ours.

Victor also tells that the inhabitants of the villages, surrounded by the taiga, are in the role of shoemakers without boots. That is, without firewood.

Chinese invasion, total cutting - all this is nonsense. So only people far from forestry, amateurs can reason and make such statements

– Им выделяет государство небольшую сумму на дрова, хватает на месяц-полтора, остальное люди должны покупать за свой счет. Но ладно, если это крепкая семья, что для деревни сейчас редкость: мужик есть, все взрослые работают, – говорит Решетников. – А если это одинокий пенсионер? Такие люди зимой в деревнях еле-еле выживают, им едва хватает на еду, не говоря о каких-то благах. А дрова они и физически не могут заготовить. Поэтому ходят, собирают какие-то палки, ветки, полуразрушенные дома разбирают потихоньку.

Но самое главное, продолжает Виктор Решетников, приезжаешь на деляну, а там древесины оставшейся столько, что с одной делянки хватит целую деревню отопить.

– Но по закону их отдать селянам нельзя. Документально-то ничего не оформлено. Вот поэтому пенсионеры, за сколько могут, договариваются с лесорубами, чтобы они с ними потихоньку заготовленными дровами поделились. Другого выхода нет, – говорит Решетников. – Справедливость обычных людей не касается. А уж о лесе и подавно никто не думает. Хорошо, что у нас в крае еще остаются леса, куда люди не добрались.

Заявления о "китайском нашествии", которое бы угрожало российской экономике, экологии, нормальной жизни людей, сильно преувеличены. Об этом в беседе с корреспондентом "Сибирь.Реалий" говорили собеседники издания – как эксперты, профессиональны лесной отрасли, так и обычные жители Амурской области и Алтая, Красноярского края и Бурятии, Приморья и Иркутска. И все они упоминали о том, что дело не в иностранцах, а в том, чтобы соблюдать законы, действующие в нашей стране.

– Китайское нашествие, тотальные вырубки – все это ерунда. Так рассуждать и делать подобные заявления могут только люди далекие от лесного хозяйства, дилетанты, – говорит Александр Зверев , руководитель филиала "Рослесозащиты" по Алтайскому краю. – Но леса требуют ухода и бережного отношения. Причем постоянно. Потому что лес – это живой организм. Он растет, мужает, стареет и болеет. Но он, если ухаживать за ним, и возобновляется. При должном уходе стабильно дает крепкую молодую поросль, которая может противостоять всем невзгодам. Должен сказать, что такая работа проводится непрерывно. Утверждать, что ее нет, по меньшей мере ошибка.

Алексей Ярошенко , руководитель лесного отдела Гринпис России, тоже считает, что главная проблема лесного хозяйства России сегодня не в иностранных предпринимателях, а в "безумии" российских законов.

Наше законодательство позволяет с лесом обращаться как с одноразовым ресурсом

- To blame China will be a big mistake. He is a consumer of approximately half of the harvested products. Firstly, the forest is mainly harvested by Russian companies, and secondly, they treat the forest as Russian laws allow them. Our legislation allows the forest to handle the forest as a disposable resource. Huge fires are added to this. Forests burn about 3-4 times more than cut down, ”explains Yaroshenko.

In his opinion, the only way to preserve the forest is the transition from the extraction of logs in wild forests to a full forestry, in which the forest will be grown on mastered lands.

- One of the biggest problems lies in the issue of forest restoration. Many officials love to say that they allegedly reached a balance between cutting and restoring the forest. This is absurd and has nothing to do with reality. In order to grow a whole forest, it must be looked after for about 15–20 years. We do not have such a departure. It is even very small in the documents, but what is is, hack. Реально у нас выращивают полноценный лес примерно на 1% от площади, которая теряется, – говорит Алексей Ярошенко. – Запретить рубку тоже невозможно, она все-таки кормит сотни тысяч человек. Меры, которые просят принять подписанты многочисленных петиций, бесполезны и нереалистичны. It is necessary to demand a complete change in the system of handling forests. A person cannot abandon the forest, but can manage correctly. An attempt to dump everything on China takes responsibility from our officials. In the north-west of the European part of Russia, there are no Chinese enterprises yet, and in the forest the same disgrace as in Siberia and in the Far East. The cutting and exhaustion of forests of the Arkhangelsk region is no different from what we see in Irkutsk. Это подтверждает, что все дело в безумии российских норм и правил.