Model Forest Needs an Experimental Status
The All-Russian “Tree planting day” campaign in the Komi Republic has been attended by the Minister for Natural Resources of Russia Sergey Donskoy and the Head of Rosleskhoz Vladimir Lebedev. In the course of their visit they got the materials on the results of the “Komi Model Forest” project implementation in Komi – an electronic presentation and a movie.
The Forest Committee of the Komi Republic and the Silver Taiga Foundation hope that the management of the relevant federal department will pay attention to the necessity of granting the Komi Model Forest territory (Priluzje forestry unit) an experimental status which has been lost due to an adoption of the current Forest Code.
Such status is required to continue the experimental works started during the project implementation and aimed at the sustainable forest management. These are an introduction of the partial cutting including the gradual felling; an approbation of the norms of the intensive forest management, an introduction of the methods of the landscape forest use planning considering significant ecological parameters of the forest landscape, relief of the territory and many other things not covered today by a “flat” forest management map though highly important for the sustainable management. At the present time it’s impossible to implement all these and many other positive initiatives at the regional level, because according to the current Forest Code all legislative initiative is handed over to the federal level.
Today almost all regional participants of the forest relations – from the republican government institutions to the NGOs and population – understand the necessity of these innovations. Now it’s important to achieve such understanding and support at the federal level – first and foremost, it refers to the Forestry agency of the RF (Rosleskhoz). Hopefully, the visit of the high-ranking officials to Komi was not only a promotional event but also a chance to evaluate and support the promising forest management initiatives of the region.
Valentina Semyashkina
Translated by Irina Sokolova