They cut down 137 pines: State Eco-Inspectorate of the Polissya District calculated over 2,3 million UAH in damages in Zhytomyr region

In Zhytomyr region, law enforcement and environmental inspectors recorded another large-scale crime against the environment. Near the village of Rubezhivka, within the Narodychi community, unknown persons illegally sawed down 137 pines.

The violation was discovered during a joint visit by a special commission that included inspectors from the State Ecological Inspectorate of the Polissya District, representatives of local authorities, the regional department of ecology, foresters, and specialists from the land management institute. They were inspecting a communal land plot overgrown with forest that had not yet been officially transferred for use.

How they documented the crime and calculated the damages

To reliably document the destruction of the trees, the specialists worked as professionally as possible:

They prepared detailed field reports describing the quantity and characteristics of each cut pine.

Using modern GNSS receivers, they precisely determined the geographic coordinates of the logging site.

They marked the boundaries of the damaged area on the ground with special signal stakes.

After all calculations, the ecologists reached the grim conclusion: the environment suffered damage amounting to 2 million 304 thousand 524 hryvnias.

“Preserving forest stands requires not only proper oversight but also a clear understanding of the responsibility for their destruction. It is especially important to establish the circumstances of such violations on lands that are in fact covered by forest vegetation but have not been transferred for use. The lack of formal forest use arrangements does not mean the area lacks nature-protection value,” emphasized Evhenii Medvedovskyi, head of the State Ecological Inspectorate of the Polissya District.