Leader of Ecological Council of Sochi complains to Putin about tree felling in the city

Vladimir Ostapuk, the leader of the Ecological Council under the Mayor of Sochi, has sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a request to pay attention to the works leading to destruction of trees in Sochi.

With the permission of the forestry administration of Sochi, they are doing the so-called "crown pruning" of cedars, sycamores, magnolias, maples and other trees, aged from 5 to 50 years. The pruning is allowed from November 1, 2014, to April 1, 2015.

"Under the guise of crown pruning, illiterate businessmen spend the budget money to destroy the green of the resort city, which had been grown by specialists for over half a century," Mr Ostapuk wrote in his letter.

In the opinion of the Ecological Council of Sochi, the city has built a wrong system of taking care of the greenery.

According to Ostapuk, the second boom of tree felling hit the city in the run-up to the Olympics, when "in the period from 2007 to 2013, entire green areas were cut in order to free the area for building Olympic facilities." No compensatory planting is able to remedy the situation, he believes.

Let us remind you that in April 2012, at an emergency sitting of the Ecological Council of Sochi dendrologists and biologists demanded to stop the practice of tree pruning, which was carried out with gross violations of technology.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.