WWF-Russia and the Russian branch of Greenpeace has addressed in the Ministry of Russia with a request to return the status of protective forests along the rivers Volga, Veruca and Paloma. Ecologists ask to give nerastvorim bands of forests across the country of the new protective status of fisheries protected areas and ensure their effective protection from logging (the letter is at the disposal of “RG”).
Category protective forests “prestoungrange strip” was created to preserve coastal zones of water bodies where spawning migration and spawning of valuable fish species. In the summer of 2019 Ministry of environment was instructed to preserve existing prestoungrange strip of woods, while the Agency will not establish new categories of protected areas – fisheries protected zone. However, this spring the forest Ust forestry of the Arkhangelsk region have been attributed to the protective and exploitation forests. As a result, one of these arestovannykh bands were assigned to other categories of protective forests, and other forests along the rivers Volga, Veruca and Paloma on a total area of 15,000 ha – in full, with the exception of the very small size of water protection areas were assigned to operational forests.
“Translation arestovannykh bands in the category of commercial forests means the removal from them of all restrictions on forest management, including clear cutting of coastal forests area of 50 ha, in some cases up to 75 hectares But these forests not only retain spawning grounds, but also serve as the last refuge for many animals, including such rare as the forest subspecies of the reindeer, recently included in the Red book of Russia”, – said Mikhail Kreindlin, a Greenpeace expert for protected areas.
Here come to spawn many species of fish, including Atlantic salmon. Previously, experts in the field of aquatic biological resources and environmental organizations have repeatedly warned the authorities about the possible negative consequences of the destruction arestovannykh bands, which would be felt by many people – anglers, the fishing business and ordinary customers.
“clear-cutting along rivers affect their affluent and clean, because they lead to the destruction of riverbanks and soil loss into water bodies. As a result, habitat conditions and spawning of valuable fish is seriously deteriorating, the fry are dying, possibly even the complete disappearance of populations. Such a fate has befallen many spawning rivers on the North-West of Russia, and it can wait another 50 million hectares of forests across the country. So much valuable forests along the rivers have lost abolished in 2019 protective status, but is still relatively new,” says Konstantin Kobyakov, coordinator of Forest program of WWF Russia on high conservation value forests.
