The Russians destroyed more than 60,000 hectares of forest in the occupied territories – mass media

Ukraine lost approximately 60,000 hectares of forest in the occupied territories. Its total value is more than 14 billion hryvnias.

Such calculations made public Independent anti-corruption center NGL.media. Satellite images were used to calculate the damage there.

According to journalists, 80% of the unique ecosystem of the “Holy Mountains” national nature park was destroyed in the Donetsk region. Almost half of the forests in Kharkiv region have been mined or damaged by fires. Almost 55,000 hectares of forests were seriously affected by flooding in the Kherson region as a result of the explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP.

On April 4, 2022, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Serhiy Shoigu asked for permission to cut down forests without any restrictions. Since then, part of the forests of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions have been used by Russians to build dugouts and other defensive fortifications.

Wood is also openly offered for sale by the occupiers. The authors of the investigation provide evidence of deployment of mobile sawmill complexes by the occupiers in Ukrainian forests.

The hostilities and fires themselves also suffered significant damage to the ecosystem.

“In the center of the destroyed forest, we see a light elongated spot – this is the front line, in particular, trenches and traces of funnels from explosions and shelling from both sides. The gray spots are the trunks of trees that were burned or shelled.

Pine forests protect our military from projectile fragments, but they lose their crowns and cannot recover after that, they become like “matchsticks” sticking out of the ground. The bright area shows us the broken sands, where the pine forest has been completely destroyed.” – describes the state of the forests Volodymyr Yarotskyi, researcher of the National Nature Park “Kremin Forests”.

The loss of a significant part of forests in certain regions will have long-term consequences, experts believe. The negative impact will affect the preservation of biodiversity, water resources, and climate regulation.

Earlier we wrote about death dozens of cetaceans as a result of military operations.

Anna Kovalenko, “UP. Life”