The head of the Federal forestry Agency Ivan Valentik: “Combating illegal harvesting and trafficking of wood – coordinated work of the Federal forestry agency,Ministry of internal affairs, Federal customs service and the entire law enforcement system of the Russian Federation”

Yesterday, February 14, 2019, at a plenary meeting of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation by deputies in the first reading was unanimously adopted the draft Federal law “On introducing amendments to Russian Federation Code on administrative offences establishing administrative liability for concealment of information about forest pathology and sanitary condition of forests or the inclusion of false information about the sanitary and forest pathology forest condition in act pathology examinations.”

The draft law is of a preventive nature, it should encourage specialists and managers who approve the acts of forest pathology examination, conduct these surveys more efficiently and treat the work more responsibly, said Deputy Minister of natural resources and the environment – head of the Federal forestry agency Ivan Valentik.

The draft law was prepared by the Government of the Russian Federation pursuant to the instruction of the President of the Russian Federation following the plenary session of the all-Russian popular front “Action Forum”.

Ivan Valentik commented on the bill in the following way: “Today’s bill addresses the issue of establishing the responsibility of the unscrupulous forest experts who estimate that assign fictitious health and Wellness activities and subsequent logging. We hope that the increase in responsibility will seriously contribute to the fact that the number of sanitary measures will be sharply reduced. The theme is of an interdepartmental nature. Combating illegal harvesting and trafficking of wood – not only the topic of the Federal forestry agency and the Ministry of internal affairs, Federal customs service, the entire system of law enforcement bodies of the Russian Federation. Therefore, today all issues related to combating illegal logging are resolved within the framework of the working group headed by Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Gordeev. Provide serious improvement of the legislation, toughening responsibility for illegal logging, the strengthening of Lesigues and Federal forest oversight, increase the number of forest conservation and other activities. At the moment, serious, coordinated and systematic work is being carried out, which will soon bring results.”