Head of Rosleskhoz: “The quality of reforestation will change for the better”

About this informed the head of the Federal forestry Agency Ivan Valentik in an interview on the TV channel “RBC”.

“The area of forests in the Russian Federation is 1.2 billion hectares, of which, in order to harvest and sell wood, the business leases about 170-180 million hectares, about 70-80 million hectares are used for other purposes – recreation, construction of linear facilities. Only about 250 million hectares. The rest is expensive component, and the government has to bear the costs of maintaining these areas,” – said Mr. Valentik.

One of the problematic aspects of the Department considers the limiting factors of the system of distribution of powers reflected in the existing Forest code, and the inability of regional authorities to fully implement these powers.

“The regions receive money from the Federal center to close all regulatory costs for measures for the protection, protection, monitoring of forests, etc., but, unfortunately, they are not enough. Federal subventions cover only 70-75 % of the needs,” said the head of the Federal forestry agency.

He reminded that within the framework of the national project “Ecology” and the Federal project “Forest Conservation” the task was set to ensure a 100% balance of disposal and reproduction of forests by 2024. For these purposes, the Federal budget has already allocated 3.5 billion rubles.

Ivan Valentik also proposes to use the tools of public-private partnership. For example, to involve business in the construction of modern forest breeding seed centers, which will grow planting material with high survival rate and ensure guaranteed reproduction of forests.

The material uses information from the press service of the Ministry of natural resources of Russia