Russia (bbabo.net), - It was not possible to completely restore the balance between cut down and reproduced forest, the Accounts Chamber stated after checking the reproduction of forests. According to the press service of the control department, in general, the situation has improved significantly, but parity has not yet been achieved, in addition, violations have been found in the work of participants in this process.

"The rate of reforestation has increased over the past five years, by the end of 2020, 93.6% of the area of ​​dead and cut down in 2019 forest plantations has been restored, - said the auditor of the Accounts Chamber Sergey Mammadov. - This is 31.8% more than in 2016." According to him, 35.4 million hectares of forest still need to be restored. At the same time, the rate of forest retirement exceeds the rate of planting new ones.

The federal project “Preservation of Forests”, calculated until the end of 2024, is called upon to restore all the forests cut down and destroyed during natural disasters. However, according to the Accounts Chamber, plans lag behind real needs.

One of the problems of reforestation is related to the fact that "activities for the creation and operation of forest nurseries are not provided with funding, including due to the fact that the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Federal Forestry Agency did not make appropriate changes to the current regulations," Mammadov added. There are also problems with equipping the regions with special equipment for planting trees, including planting material with a closed root system.

The Accounts Chamber invites the Ministry of Natural Resources and Rosleskhoz to approve the procedure for accounting, updating and using seeds of forest plants from the federal fund, to determine a unified procedure for accepting reforestation work performed by tenants engaged in timber harvesting. In addition, it is necessary to update the forest inventory documents - for 84% of the forest fund they are older than 10 years. Another problem is money. In 2019, funding from the federal budget amounted to only 67% of the amounts declared by the regions, in 2020 - 82%.

When checking the financial statements, violations and shortcomings were found for a total of 127 million rubles. According to the auditors, this is a serious violation. It is connected with the lack of authority for Rosleskhoz to finance government work.

Rosleskhoz agreed with the remarks of the Accounts Chamber and has already prepared draft regulations that will eliminate some of the identified legal gaps. The forest department drew attention to the fact that this year the work on forest management has been transferred to the federal level, which will allow faster updating of information on the state of the forest fund.

In turn, the head of the commission of the Public Chamber on Ecology, Elena Sharoikina, proposed to consider the results of reforestation not by the number of planted seedlings, but by the number of grown trees. Without proper care, the survival rate of young plantations is low, she said, which is why the real recovery of the forest can be far behind what is reported.

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