Ecologists: road construction in "Bolshoi Utrish" Reserve in Krasnodar Territory was legalized by three Departments

Ecologists now know from documents that three Departments of the Krasnodar Territory had participated in legalizing the road constructions in the "Bolshoi Utrish" Nature Reserve near the city of Anapa. And one of them - the Department of Biological Resources and Environment Preservation - has coordinated all the issues of this construction within one day.

"The permit was signed personally by the head of the Department Igor Tokarev," said Candidate of Biological Sciences Suren Gazaryan, member of the Board of the Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus.

According to the ecologist, the Department for Emergencies and State Ecological Supervision gave out its permit only on November 27, when the road-building works in Utrish were at full swing. Sergey Kapustin, Deputy Chair, had signed the permit on behalf of the Department.

The scientist has added that the Department for Emergencies and State Ecological Supervision, which is in charge of fire safety, should have known that the history of fires in the Krasnodar Territory clearly evidences that most frequently they start in the sites adjoining roads. They should have known that the "Bolshoi Utrish" Reserve, throughout its long history, had no large-scale fires, which demanded the use of special fire-fighting machinery. Thus, there is absolutely no need to build a fire-prevention road deep into the Reserve.

"And, finally, the customer of the working project entitled 'Construction of Fire-Prevention Forestry Road in the Anapa Local Forest District of the Novorossisk Forestry' was the Department of Forestry of the Krasnodar Territory," said the ecologist, "headed by Anatoly Maksimenko."

According to Mr Gazaryan, this Department is in charge for protection and observance of legality in the forests located in the territory of the "Bolshoi Utrish" Reserve. However, in reality, it turned out to be the initiator of the actions, which bring destruction to the forests and unique natural complexes, and which fall under criminal liability.

According to the scientist, the project of the construction is just a heap of hastily collected preliminary materials, which are contradictory to the legislation and mismatching the real process of construction. They have no environment impact assessment (EIA) and no reports on mandatory public hearings.

As a whole, in Suren Gazaryan's opinion, at designing and realizations of this project four federal laws were broken: "On Especially Protected Natural Territories", "On Environment Preservation", "On Ecological Examination" and "On Fauna".