Forests of Siberia and the Far East are ruthlessly cut down for export to China

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

2017 has been declared the Year of the Environment in Russia. Only, it seems, not our country, but China. Such a feeling is created by looking at how, in order to please the Celestial Empire, which is restoring its forests, taiga is being cut down in Siberia and the Far East.

The Irkutsk Region holds the anti-record. Last year, more than a million cubic meters of Russian timber was illegally cut down there and exported to China

What is the main natural wealth of our country? Many will answer: of course, oil and gas. After all, it is on their exports that the main budgetary revenues of Russia are built. However, there is another answer: this is the forest, the “green gold” of the country.

First, in terms of oil reserves, our country is only eighth in the world, and in terms of forest area - the first on the entire planet. In Russia, about 25% of all world forest reserves, 3 times more than in the United States and Canada, taken together, over 50% of the world's reserves of valuable conifers. Secondly, and this is the main thing, oil, gas and other minerals are extracted and not restored, that is, sooner or later they will run out. And the forest, if you treat it with care and diligence, will live forever, bringing great benefits to the entire people - both economic and environmental. This is especially true of the Siberian and Far Eastern taiga, which is rightly called one of the main "lungs of the planet" and our national treasure.

More than half of all illegally mined timber is cut down in the Irkutsk region

Alas, this national treasure is now not simply not protected. He is being barbarously destroyed. Forests are shrinking at an alarming rate, and millions of hectares of green space have already been lost. And, according to the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources Sergei Donskoy, the damage from logging in Russia is growing every year. Over the past five years, the volume of illegal logging has increased by 70%!

Almost all of this Russian wealth, which has become an export item, goes in the form of timber to China. In the Amur Region, according to the official data of the environmental prosecutor's office, more than half (!) Of the state forest fund has been allocated for felling. And these are only legal volumes. The scale of the shadow business is at least no less. In Primorye alone, up to 1.5 million cubic meters of timber is illegally cut down annually, which brings shadow structures at least $ 150 million in profit. This amount is almost half of the regional budget.

According to the reports of the Siberian Customs Administration, in 2016 alone, loggers supplied almost 7 million cubic meters of timber to foreign consumers. Three quarters of this volume falls on the Baikal taiga, where more than 10% of the forest reserves of all of Russia are concentrated. As a result, the ecology of Lake Baikal - one of the most beautiful pearls in Russia - is now under threat of destruction. The territory of the Irkutsk region is unique, since the share of valuable conifers is very high here, even on a global scale. In addition, the forest protects the soil from drying out. However, even in Soviet times, the Irkutsk region was in the lead in terms of logging volumes. In the post-Soviet period, she achieved even greater success in this field, cutting down timber several times more than any other subject of the Russian Federation. According to official data from the Ministry of Natural Resources, more than half of all illegally mined Russian timber is harvested in the Irkutsk region. It accounts for 62% of the timber exports of the entire Siberian Federal District. The entire southern half of the Irkutsk Region is now almost a continuous felling area. The areas covered by legal and especially illegal logging are unprecedented. The territory of the Irkutsk region is currently covered by clearcuts by almost 50%, even on space images one can see huge wastelands.

The largest forest dump in the world

Throughout the Irkutsk region, forest cemeteries are multiplying - and not only in the form of dead stumps of former living lush trees. Every city in the south and in the center of the Baikal region has huge dumps of discarded trunks and branches. The largest such forest dump in the world with a volume of 2 million cubic meters is under the city of Ust-Kut. After all, as a rule, only round timber is exported, that is, the lower, most valuable part of the trunk, while the rest of the trunk and crown remain in place to rot - like the corpse of a former living tree. This is what both "black" lumberjacks and legal tenants do. And it is more convenient to transport round timber. Russia has already become the planet's leader in the export of round, unprocessed timber - 16% of the world market - an unremarkable leadership.

Local residents are killing their own ecology, because for many it is the only way to earn money. The local authorities are satisfied with this, because they do not have to bother with the creation of legal jobs. And there are no protesters among the residents, because many are involuntarily employed in the criminal forest business. Corrupt officials are doing everything they can to keep this massacre going. Hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of valuable species are illegally cut down under the pretext of sanitary felling. Almost no one seems to be really checking whether the logger has chosen his quota or has already exceeded it many times over.

Moreover, the government also helps in every possible way to cut down the taiga for commercial purposes. A large part of the territory of Siberia and the Far East has already been leased to entrepreneurs from China or to a joint Russian-Chinese administration. Tenants from China, which has become the main importer of Russian timber (64% of all its exports), are given tax preferences. For export to the Celestial Empire, there are preferential duties.

China has banned deforestation on its territory

The Ministry of Justice has approved the rules according to which the Ministry of Natural Resources has increased the area of forests, where it is possible to harvest wood, by 1.5 times. Now industrial felling is allowed in valuable cedar forests. Mikhail Kreindlin, head of the Greenpeace Russia program for protected areas, is outraged: “This will result in the destruction of forests in many regions of Siberia and the Far East, from the Tomsk region to Primorye. Many animals will lose their homes. The most valuable species - Angara pine, Mongolian oak, Korean pine, Manchurian ash - are being destroyed, and this is a blow to the entire ecosystem of the region. The water level in many rivers is already abnormally low, lakes are drying up. In the thinning forests of the Far East, according to the World Wildlife Fund, there are only 450 individuals of the Amur tiger listed in the Red Book.

On the other hand, cedar wood is in significant demand, including among processors in China, where their own harvesting of cedar is almost completely stopped. Not surprisingly, exports from Russia are growing. However, it looks more like the export of raw materials from an occupied colony. The Chinese government even passed a law prohibiting the import of processed timber from Russia - everything is in the interests of domestic, that is, Chinese, manufacturers. One cubic meter of Russian round timber is sold to China at about $ 40 per kilogram, and lumber made from it there for the USA and Europe is already on the international forest markets for 500 "bucks" per cubic meter. Nice broth, right?

When 2017 was officially approved as the Year of Ecology, Minister Donskoy assured: "I am sure that positive changes will be noticeable to everyone." And he did not deceive. The positive changes are very noticeable … in China. If in the south of Siberia and the Far East there are already deserts of stumps alone, because timber is cut all day long, and there are practically no processing industries, then in a 50-kilometer zone on the side of China there are huge processing complexes littered with Russian timber.

BY THE WAY

The authorities of the Celestial Empire, where forests were mercilessly destroyed before, 10 years ago they rigidly prohibited their cutting down - under strict criminal punishment. With the aim of transforming China into an ecological civilization, the authorities are working to restore forests that will cover about a quarter of the country by 2020. This state program is already bearing fruit. To date, about 13 million hectares of forest areas have been created. Where there were all the stumps, green oak forests rustled again. Let's be glad that this is also the merit of Russian forests sacrificed to the revival of Chinese ecology …