Today environmentalists of International charitable organization “Environment-People-Law” and the WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme Petro Testov and Anatoliy Pavelko together with civil activists from Lviv explored territories of the local forest reserve “Chortova skelia” located within jurisdiction of Lviv municipality.
According to the plan of wood cutting with the aim to form and treat the forest released by the state enterprise “Lviv forestry” on its official web-site, three planned wood cuttings were planned in the reserve: forest recovery cutting in the quarter 15 on the area of 11,6 ha and reconstruction wood cutting in the quarters 15 and 16 on the total area of 4,1 ha of Vynnyky forestry of the state enterprise “Lviv forestry”.
The reality exceeded the worst expectations – “reconstructive and recovery wood cutting” covered healthy old trees that are more than one hundred years old. In opinion of environmentalists, such “forest recovery and formation” de facto is main wood cutting.
“It is hard to control emotions when 5 km away from Rynok Square you see hectares of cut ancient beeches. This is barbarism! This is also direct violation of the legislation because according to the “Provision on forest reserves of local importance “Chortova skelia”, the main task of the reserve is protection, preservation and restoration of valuable natural beech plantations as well as of the whole complex of flora and fauna. This is a particularly outrageous fact that this happens within the city area, in the territory subordinated to Lviv city council, – comments EPL environmentalist Petro Testov.
Although several hectares of forests have already been cut and the rest are marked for total cutting, still there is a chance to save the forest!
Thus, EPL calls on Lviv regional administration of forestry and hunting and the state enterprise “Lviv forestry” to cancel the forest cutting permits for wood cutting in quarters 15 and 16 of Vynnyky forestry and the state enterprise “Lviv forestry” and have an internal investigation regarding lawfulness of the wood cutting.
Contacts:
Petro Testov, EPL environmentalist
Email: office@epl.org.ua; petro.testov@gmail.com
tel.: (032) 225 – 76 -82
