The State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” is completing spring planting, during which it has already planted more than 113 million seedlings, which is 102% of the plan, said the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“We are continuing large-scale planting in the South, where no new forests have been created for many years. The areas for reforestation in Mykolaiv region have been agreed with ecologists so as not to harm the steppe ecosystem. Among other regions, the leaders in planting were the Kyiv Forestry Office and the Polissia Forestry Office,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to Bolokhovets, in 2024, foresters are not only reforesting, but also increasing the area of new forests, in particular, reforesting areas transferred to the state enterprise by local communities as part of the Forest Recovery project.
“In total, more than 2.1 thousand hectares of new forests have been created this spring, which is more than all forestry enterprises did in the entire year of 2022,” he added.
In addition, Forests of Ukraine is increasing the production and planting of seedlings with a closed-root system (CRS), which demonstrate better survival, savings on care and allow planting larger areas with fewer resources. Prior to the reform, 1-2 million seedlings were planted with the SSS, while this year’s plan is to plant 20 million, Bolokhovets said.
“In general, the creation of high-quality planting material is turning into a promising business area for the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”. According to the latest news, we are preparing about 107,500 seedlings for sale to Estonia. Our network of seed-breeding centers is expanding and increasing its capacity,” summarized the CEO of the Forests of Ukraine.
As reported, the forestry reform was launched in Ukraine in 2016. As part of it, the sale of raw wood at electronic auctions has already been introduced. Since 2021, an interactive map of wood processing facilities has been operating in a test mode in a number of regions.
The industry has implemented the Forest in a Smartphone project, which contains a list of logging tickets for timber harvesting and allows you to check the legality of logging on the agency’s online map.
On June 1, 2023, Ukraine launched a pilot for the electronic issuance of logging tickets and certificates of origin of timber. In addition, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has launched a pilot project to procure timber harvesting services through the electronic platform Prozorro.
