MOSCOW - More than 310,000 hectares of forests have burnt down in wildfires in Russia since spring, a source in the Ministry of Natural Resources told Itar-Tass on Friday. About 12,000 fires were registered in the country for the period. Meanwhile, the ministry recalled that this data cannot be considered firefinal, as the fire-prone season in Russia will last till November 1.
According to the ministry, 125 forest fires are registered now. Most of them are raging in the Chita, Nizhniy Novgorod regions, Buryatia and the Krasnodar territory.
Not only fires, but also illegal forest devastation threaten the Russian major natural resource – forests. According to the latest information of the Federal Agency of Forest Industry, 29.7 thousand cubic meters of forests have been cut in the Far Eastern region alone in the first half of the year. The damages made 724 million roubles.
In order to change the current situation and for the timely and higher exposure rate of violations in the forest legislation, the Federal Agency of Forest Industry began creating an aviation and space monitoring system of the Russian forest fund this year. This distant monitoring will be used at about 140 million hectares in 2006 where forests are intensively used.