ILLEGAL LOGGING IN RUSSIA - SUMMARY OF REPORT "FOREST FELLING ACTIVITIES IN RUSSIA"

RELEASED JUNE 30 IN VLADIVOSTOCK AND MOSCOW

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Unfortunately, illegal logging has become a common practice in Russia and, depending on which region, the amount of illegally logged timber among the total of logged timber has increased significantly. The purpose of this report is to put together data regarding logging practices which abuse the Russian Forest Protection Law.

According to this approximatley 20 % of the timber logged in Russia violates current law(s). The damage of illegal logging is the adverse impact to the environment and threat to biodiversity but also the reduction of income from forest timbers due to corruption. Image of Russian forestry industry would also be damaged. Companies which import Russian timber cannot be sure if the timber they aquire is legally logged.

Unlike many countries of the world, Russia has a sophisticated forestry legislation and, what is even more important, a specific method for implementing this legislation, From certain points of view, Russia's forestry legislation is redundant as it regulates even those forestry aspects that in many other countries are left at the disposal of local forestry workers (foresters and managers). The legislation determines the severity and extent of forestry violations or, in other words, forms and methods of illegal felling activities.

To refer to illegal cuttings in Russia, a definition is given in Resolution #14 of the Russian Federation Supreme Court of December 5, 1998. As stated to wit: 'Illegal forest felling operation (cutting) is cutting of trees, bushes and lianas without a felling ticket, order of cutting with a felling ticket, order issued with abuse of the existing cutting-practice rules, as well as cutting carried out at the wrong site or beyond a site's borders, exceeding the set quantities, cutting of wrong species or of trees, bushes and lianas that are not subject to cutting…'. We should point out here that this definitions is related do the procedure of application of Article 260 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code by court. A deed becomes subject to punishment when the damages imposed exceed a particular amount (20 or 200)floor wages). However, The Rules of On-Stump Wood Allocation in Russian forests (hereinafter referred to as the wood allocation Rules or WAR, endorsed by the Russian Federation Governmental Resolution #551 of June 6, 1998) sets up fines for many of the violations.

If paid, these fines save a trespasser from criminal prosecution, despite the fact that the imposed damage is large enough to become subject to the Criminal Code. This is a large loophole to avoid punishment for severe violations. In such a situation, the volume and number of violations constantly grows, especially in those cases when official penalties are less than the profit that one can gain. Compounding the problem is that fact that, in most cases, the agencies entitled to supervise different aspects of forestry work separately from one another. Moreover, their activities (and conclusions) often contradict one another, in particular to illegal cuttings. An integration of all controlling bodies into one ministry will make the control of logging operations much weaker due to the specific practice of violations outlined below:

Illegal cuttings can be divided into two large categories:
- Cuttings carried on without permits or with forged permits,
- Cutting with official permits (felling tickets, orders for low amount allocation) which, in and of themselves, cannot guarantee that the felling is legal.

Each of these large groups consists of a wide range of variants. Clearly the classification given below is relative and each case is quite difficult to be defined by a particular scheme, especially if the case, as it very often happens, is comprised of a number of violations simultaneously.

CATEGORIES AND CASE STUDY

CATEGORIES

Cuttingwithout permits (they are very often called unsanctioned)

1. Cuttings carried out by local residents for personal needs.
2. Cuttings carried out by residents of mobile teams for subsequent sale.
3. Cutting carried out by companies near officially developed sites or in the distant areas that are seldom visited by supervision agencies.
4. Fellings caused by the unauthorized construction of non-forestry facilities
   
   'LICENSED'BUT ILLEGAL FOREST FELLING OPERATIONS
   
   
5. Issuing permits for felling in areas where felling is prohibited or not envisioned in current legislation. -A classical example is cuttings in specially protected natural areas, or areas where cuttings are explicitly forbidden by the nature protection regime.
6. Issuing logging permits with violations of the existing procedure for permit issuing or without the assessment of the real logging capacity without violations of current legislation.
7. Entering deliberate amendments into forest management documentation, formally allowing cuttings otherwise prohibited.
8. Intentional mistakes of forest inventory.
9. Forest cuttings carried out with abuse of the existing legislation.

What should be done in Russia:

: # Change the system of forest protection when every forester is responsible fortheir particular part of the territory and start using small but very mobile and well equipped inspector teams operating only in areas situated far from their permanent residents. Such teams should be organized first of all in those areas where forest felling and wood logging operations are especially active.

# prohibition of any economic activities by foreign bodies (department of the Federal Forest Service - the Ministry of natural resources) no matter how good their intentions might be;

# introduction of additional (redundant) checks of documents for the timber transported on the roads leading to sale places;

# Introduction of appropriate amendments to the Criminal Code and administrative Infraction Code to toughen punishment for forestry offences, as well as transportation and legalization of illegally logged wood;

# A full review of the procedure of assessment of actual volumes of wood logged at logging sites; at the present time the volume assessment is based on the Forestry Committee of the Soviet Union, the instruction dates back to 1983 and is designed for a socialist 'unprofitable' economy. It is also necessary to introduce new technologies and remote assessment methods;

# Full review existing procedure of routine control over forest felling operations carried out by wood loggers;

# enlargement of the powers of other agencies supervising forest management and operations of forestry bodies, this has become especially important after the environmental protection agencies and forestry service bodies were united into one ministry;

# to provide open and free-information on forest management to make public control possible; the existing procedure of public access to information about forest management is either very expensive and people simply can't afford it or it lacks any information on how ordinary people can access such important information, as well as felling licenses, allocation materials etc.

# to introduce additional customs codes to the following roundwood to be exported from Russia: other spruce timber (except norway spruce); other fir timber; siberian and korean pine timber; walnuts, alders; aspens. Such changes will allow to introduce more precise control on timber export as well as more accurate comparison of logged and exported amounts.

CASE STUDY

In 1999 licenses for valuable tree species export were introduced (in the Far East these were oak and ash-tree). After that it became impossible to ship and export such timber without an appropriate certificate and license. However, the governmental decision implied a permissive license issue procedure, meaning htat every person who applies for a license, would be given such license and that this license should be given such license and that this license should be given on the wood volumes he or she applied for. Formally the authorities were afraid to create obstacles for the development or industry. On May 25, 1999 the Primorye Vice-Governor, Vladimir Stegny, sent a letter to the Russian Federation Ministry of Economy.

The letter said "From year to year volumes of valuable tree species export from the Primorye to the People's Republic of China and Japan significantly exceee the legal cutting norms. Automatic expoort licensing without quantitative limits dose not give any leverage to influence unfair exporters.

In Primorye, for the period of time from February 15 through May 20, 1999 export licenses were issued to 930.9 thousad m3 of valuable wood, when the regional norms for these species for the whole 1999 are only 260,000m3". In Primorye, about 260,000m3 of valuable tree species were permitted to be cut. However, only Primorye companies exported officially (and declared) more than 500,000 m3 (not including the valid timber exported under customs code 4403 10900). The problem is of all of the valuable tree species in the Far East only oak has its own customs code in the Customs Code List for Foreign Trade Operations. Walnut, cork tree and ash together with lime, aspen and alder and other tree species were sold under a single customs code. That's why it is impossible to say precisely how much valuable timber was exported from Primorye and other Russian regions.

Large volumes of the export licenses that exceed the permitted cutting volumes, allow timber exporting companies to legalise illegally logged wood. In fact, when illegally logged wood comes to, for example, the Plastun port ot the Dalnerechensk base, it becomes legal due to the number of already issued licenses.

The export of Valuable Tree species from the Far East, 1999, m3
Primorye region		Khabarovsk region		Imported by buyer countries
Rosleskhoz	RF SCC	Regional administration	RF SCC	Japan*	China
1888000	523000	Up to 300000	135000	336000	352000
RF SCC - Russian Federation State Customs Committee *Only highest quality timber is included

Conclusion:
The experience of the last year reveals that unfortunately it has become a usual practice of forest felling to ignore the existing legislation. For example, in June 2000, at one of the logging sites of the Dalnegorsk district in the Primorye region we detected a felling operation that was carried out outside of the borders of the permitted logging site. It was conducted in a remote part of an allotment were a few Korean Pines were cut down (although, as the loggers said they were forbidden to cut Korean Pines). In the same area log-ways ran along a stream. There were other violations, but none of the workers saw this to be anything wrong, saying, We've cut down a couple of Korean Pines. So what?! Cutting a few Korean Pines won't harm. This phrase says everything about the attitude of wood loggers in regard to breaches of the law. Unfortunately, the attitude of the supervising agencies toward this issue is the very similar.