Volumes of illegal logging in Ukraine in 2019-2021

Volumes of illegal logging documented by forest users in Ukraine in 2019-2021 (based on public requests)

125,279 cubic meters of illegally harvested timber in 2019, 60,950 cubic meters in 2020, and 25,799 cubic meters in the forests of the State Forestry Agency in 2021 – these are the losses suffered by forest users in Ukraine due to illegal logging. We identified 614 forest users of various forms of ownership and subordination and collected information on the volume of illegal logging on their territory in 2019–2021 based on public information and data provided by the forest users themselves or the departments under which they are subordinate.

The study revealed that:

• The forest fund area of the identified forest users of all subordination is 9,825,837 hectares. Of these, the largest area is occupied by forests subordinated to the State Forest Resources Agency (72.78%), followed by communal forest users (10.47%), wildlife management institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources (10.58%), State Agency on Exclusion Zone Management (2.44%), etc.
  
  
•  According to our calculations, the share of officially documented illegally harvested timber in the total volume of timber harvesting (all forest users) amounted to 0.6% in 2019 and 0.3% in 2020.
  
  
• Losses incurred due to illegal logging were calculated only by the State Forest Resources Agency. Other forest users have not provided estimates of damages.
  
  
• The dynamics of detected illegal logging in Ukraine in 2020 has changed compared to 2019. The volume of detected illegal logging decreased in the State Forest Resources Agency, while other forest users have different results.
  
  
•  Currently, there is no unified reporting form for detected illegal logging, which does not allow forest users properly summarize volumes of illegally harvested timber, to monitor the progress of investigations of detected illegal logging and the level of prosecution of perpetrators.
  
  
• The need to regulate at the legislative level such notions as "illegal logging" and "illegally harvested timber". The current uncertainty leads to different interpretations, discrepancies in statistical reports of different departments, and thus to corruption risks in the logging and timber processing sector.

The full text of the study is available here.