Deforestation in a recently created wildlife sanctuary in the Arkhangelsk region has caused millions of rubles in damage and was the result of oblivious approvals issued by local forestries, the Russian Greenpeace office said in a statement published on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th December, 2019) Deforestation in a recently created wildlife sanctuary in the Arkhangelsk region has caused millions of rubles in damage and was the result of oblivious approvals issued by local forestries, the Russian Greenpeace office said in a statement published on Wednesday.The Dvinsko-Pinezhsky nature reserve, with an area of 300,000 hectares (about 740,000 acres), was demarcated by local authorities on October 1, 2019, after a 20-year effort from naturalists aiming to preserve the centuries-old untouched forests in European Russia's north.
"The regulation on the reserve allows only sanitary clearings and completely prohibits commercial logging on the territory of protected areas. However ... after the creation of the reserve, eight clearings and forest roads were laid on its territory, The total cutting area, according to preliminary estimates, amounted to about 156 hectares," the Greenpeace said in a statement.
The iconic NGO noted that the loggers, a local paper mill company, had obtained the proper paperwork from the local government's forestry agency, which had apparently distributed the license without prior knowledge of the territory's new sanctuary.
"The fact that logging was the result of stupidity and incompetence rather than malicious intent does not diminish the damage caused to the reserve," the statement went on to read.
The NGO called for law enforcement to investigate the incident and launch a criminal case in accordance with Russian environmental protection laws.
Sputnik has so far been unable to obtain any comments from Russia's Ministry of the Environment or it's subsidiary, the Federal Forestry Agency.
