Stavropol: officials of local "MinPrirody" fight against construction of villas in state reserve "Russkiy Les"

The Stavropol Regional Court is considering a number of complaints lodged by Yuri Gridnev, the head of the local "MinPrirody" (Ministry of Natural Resources), against alienation of land plots in the territory of the state reserve "Russkiy Les" (Russian Forest), located near the city of Stavropol in the vicinity of the village of Grushevoy.

Back in 2007, Valery Fateev, Chairman of the Summer Non-Commercial Comradeship (SNCC) "Mekhanizator", located on the border of the "Russkiy Les", addressed his official letter to the administration of Stavropol asking to add 14.4 hectares of the forest to the Comradeship. At that time, the official area of the SNCC "Mekhanizator" (initially, a horticultural one), which was founded back in Soviet times, was 25 hectares.

In March 2010, the Mayor of Stavropol Nikolai Paltsev signed a statement updating the boundaries of the SNCC "Mekhanizator" and including the above 14.4 hectares of the state reserve "Russkiy Les" into its territory. In the course of updating the boundaries of the SNCC, the head of the administration of the Promyshlenny District issued a number of decisions and assigned these 14.4 hectares for summer cottages, while the Land Cadastral Chamber of the Stavropol Territory put all these land plots on the State Cadastre.

Experts from the local "MinPrirody" have assessed the potential damage that may be caused to the ecosystem of the "Russkiy Les" in case villas are built in those land plots. According to the estimate of Oleg Perfiliev, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources of the Stavropol Territory, the point is in potential cutting of a total of 5200 trees for the total value of about 125 million roubles.

During the summer of 2010, the Stavropol Ecological Prosecutor's Office sent 50 complaints to the Promyshlenny District Court demanding to cancel the decisions of the administration of the Promyshlenny District of Stavropol on allocation of the land plots from the territory of the natural reserve to private persons, to remove these plots from the State Cadastre and return into the state property.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent received an explanation from Sergey Belyovtsev, the Stavropol Territorial Ecological Public Prosecutor, that during the spring of 2011 the Promyshlenny District Court of Stavropol made decisions on all the complaints filed by the Prosecutor's Office: only four complaints were satisfied in full; some more were rejected, while most of the complaints were partially satisfied. However, already the cassation instance of the Territorial Court, where the decisions of the first instance were appealed against by the parties in the case, similar refusals on all the complaints were passed.

Then, within December 2011, the "MinPrirody" of the Stavropol Territory, which had initially acted in the litigation as a third party, lodged its supervisory complaints to the Territorial Court. According to Mr Belyovtsev, the supervisory authority of the Stavropol Territorial Court has already rejected 9 claims, while two supervisory complaints lodged by the "MinPrirody" on the eve of the New Year are to be considered. The claims on the remaining land plots will be lodged after the New Year holidays.

Tatiana Nikitushkina, deputy head of the NGO "Protest Committee of Stavropol", which had initiated collection of signatures against the alienation of land plots of the "Russkiy Les", has explained the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the land from the natural reserve was split among high-ranking officials, including the Territorial Department of the Russian Registry and the Committee for Managing Municipal Property of the Administration of Stavropol.

So far, there are no comments from the officials of the Territorial Department of the Russian Registry, the Land Cadastral Chamber of the Stavropol Territory, the Committee for Managing Municipal Property of the Administration of Stavropol and the administration of the Promyshlenny District of the territorial capital.