Obligatory licensing of fire preventing and extinguishing
activity, including forest fires, was implemented by federal law
"About licensing of particular kinds of activity» in 2001. On the
level of normative government acts the demand of this law was
incarnated in "Enactment about licensing fire preventing and
extinguishing activity", which was approved on the 25th October
2006.
This statute made demands for recipient that are absolutely
impractical for forestry organization and forest fund holders.
Virtually, it meant that forestry organs that had been doing all
the fire preventing work and more than 90% of extinguishing work
earlier lost their legal possibility to continue this work.
Practically there was no one to prevent and extinguish fires in
Russia legally according to the "Statute".
On 4th of December 2006 by federal law "About consummation of
Forest codex" the demand of obligatory forest fire preventing work
licensing was excluded from federal law "About licensing of
particular kinds of activity" . However, suitable changes have not
been included into " Decree about licensing forest fire preventing
work".
In January 2006 Greenpeace turned to President of Russian
federation V.V. Putin with a letter, in which it was explained why
it is necessary to abolish the demand to license forest fire
preventing works. The reply concerning this letter has been
received form head of Fire Safety Authority Office of EMERCOM which
said that until normative legal acts are matching current
legislation of Russian Federation, forest fire preventing works
will not be licensed. It was also promised that Greenpeace
suggestions about bringing changes into order of licensing forest
fire preventing works will be acknowledged during further work with
normative-legal acts (this promise is fulfilled).
Now, after alteration of "Enactment about licensing fire
preventing and extinguishing activity", licensing of fire
(including forest fire) prevention works is not needed. This means
that any forestry organ or forest user has the full legal right to
take measures to prevent forest fires on the territory, which he is
responsible for.