About illegal logging in the Ural federal district

Illegal logging and turnover of timber of illegal or dubious origin are one of the most vexed environmental, social, and economic problems in our country, which is recognized by all parties of the forestry relations. The opinions differ only in the evaluation of the scale of this phenomenon. Taking into account that the decentralization of forestry administration in the Russian Federation, implemented by the Forest codes of 2006, has led to a shift in management decisions from the federal to the regional level, in this work the authors attempt to analyze the severity of the problem and the main causes of the above phenomenon on the example of one of the eights districts of Russian Federation, namely, on the example of the Ural Federal District (UFD). As a result of the study, it was found that the problem of illegal logging in the region is systemic and sustainable. The largest volumes of such felling in the district traditionally take place in the Sverdlovsk region. The paper identifies the main causes of illegal logging in UFD. Based on the results of the study, a number of measures have been proposed to reduce the volume of illegal logging in the district in the coming years.