Under the new edition, from now on the powers which once
belonged to the state forestry conservation bodies are to be
transferred under the control of the Federal nature management
supervision agency with the forestry management remaining under the
jurisdiction of the Federal Forestry Agency (FFA).
In other words, since the Federal nature management supervision
agency has embraced all possible functions of control over the
forest legislation enforcement, all the people from leskhozes, as
well as those engaged in aviation-supervised forestry and other
FFA's structures are not in charge of forest conservation any
more.
Theoretically, we couldn't but just welcome the above-mentioned
change, at last we could witness the evident separation of the
forestry control bodies from those occupied in economical activity.
At last the wide-spread USSR's principle "the wood that I conserve
is the wood I can dispose of" was replaced.
Nonetheless the real forecast is as follows: the change in the
legislation will collapse the existing system of control over
forest legislation enforcement.
The thing is that despite the dissatisfying performance of the
state supervision body, this former governmental structure played
role of a forest's master who kept an eye on its resources, even if
this role was illusive. The number of those engaged in forestry was
quite considerable and it amounted to 100 thousand workers. That
made it possible to some extent to control private forest users and
to fight violations of the law.
According to Government, there are about 3000 employees in the
territorial bodies of the Federal nature management supervision
agency that implies on average just 35 persons left for each
territory of the Russian Federation.
Apart from holding control over the use of underground and water
resources, forests and animals, the duties of 35 thus chosen will
as well include management over specially protected natural areas
and environmental impact assessment. In other words, there is going
to be just one person in charge of one particular administrative
territory within the forest zone of Russia.
Taking into account that the main MNR's function is control over
the use of underground resources (and it easy to understand while
our country is still "addicted to oil" and has no intention of
abandoning this habit), almost no control over the forest
legislation enforcement is going to be fulfilled.
One more drawback. The dismissal of 100 thousand people engaged
in forestry conservation will undoubtedly spark off an increase in
unemployment rate.
The unemployed will have to start searching for another source
of income. The majority of them will choose a criminal path,
because the forestry and its reserves have long been legally
distributed among the representatives of businesses. The former
workers are real professionals and they will surely not prevent
themselves from cheating the state in order to earn their
living.
Thus, our officials' decision about abolition of the forestry
conservation bodies in the Federal Forestry Agency's structure has
at least two consequences. First, it causes the destruction of the
former territorial forest supervision bodies. Second, it forms
ideal social conditions for forest poaching. To make things worse,
this sort of poaching is going to be more qualified, because now it
is being developed and supervised by people who worked all their
life exactly in the sphere of forest conservation. And there can
hardly be any successful campaign against poaching with only
several thousand people fighting it in the country.
Following a famous saying: "We tried our best, you know the
rest".