Climate action restores forests in Russia

Photo by: Dmitrii Anikin / iStock

In recent years, forest fires have become a virtually routine occurrence around the world in summer. Fires have covered vast areas of the Siberian taiga and central Russia, the forests of Turkey and many countries in Europe, Asia and America. Climate change and global warming — increasing global temperatures on the planet and consequently an imbalance of water in nature: droughts and floods — have been cited as the causes of such a large-scale and widespread disaster. Droughts provoke wildfires, but often the cause of a particular fire is man himself.

In Russia the problem of fires is one of the most acute in the field of ecology, as the area of forests here is huge (almost two-three countries). Between 9,000 and 35,000 forest fires are registered annually in the country, covering an area of between 500,000 and several million hectares.

Since 2019, the federal project “Conservation of Forests” of the national project “Ecology” has been working in Russia to restore the forest fund. Its main task is to reproduce the forest cover that has been cut down and destroyed by fires, as well as to involve residents in the protection and conservation of nature. About 1 million seedlings are planted annually as part of the project.

In the Novosibirsk Region, the area of restored forest area is almost twice as large as the area of dead and felled forests. This was reported by the regional Ministry of Nature on 17 October 2022. This year, the area of forest planting has exceeded 5.5 thousand hectares.

“The results for the key indicator ‘ratio of reforestation area to the area of felled and dead plantations’ are twice the target figure every year. As of today, it stands at 185% of the annual plan, with work still ongoing,” the regional government said.

In particular, in Moshkovsky district, Novosibirsk region, volunteers planted 40,000 young pine trees on 10 hectares of burnt forest in three days. The plantings were carried out at the site where a landscape fire destroyed conifers on an area of 23.5 hectares in the spring of 2021.

The trees were planted by around 250 people — specialists from the local administration, regional Natural Resources Ministry and forestry department, members of the school forestry team, volunteers, and soldiers.

It is to be mentioned that on 28th May 2022 the President signed a law about the amendments to the Code of Administrative Violations according to which the fines for breaking the rules of fire safety in forests are increasing in 2–10 times, the maximum penalty (for forest fires which cause death or severe injuries) for legal recourses will amount to Br2 mln. The burning of dry grass, forest litter, and the like is now punishable by a fine of 30–40 thousand rubles for citizens (previously it was 3–4 thousand rubles) and from 300 to 500 thousand rubles for legal entities.

Cover photo: Damian Lugowski / iStock