Fundamental amendments to the Forest Code of the Russian Federation came into force

Innovations of the Federal Law No. 415 “On making amendments to the Forest Code of the Russian Federation and the Code of the Russian Federation on administrative violations” that came into force on February 1, 2014, directly concern citizens of the Republic that address the Ministry of Forestry of the Republic of Tatarstan with regard to allocation of timber for firewood or personal needs. Deputy Head of the Federal Forestry Agency, Nikolay Krotov, emphasized: “The law will suppress various grey schemes that emerge as rather legal wood cutting. In particular, citizens who exercised their legal right to prepare wood for their own needs, but then decided to make money on it, won’t be able to sell the wood. Each year the state allocates about 20 million cubic meters of wood for personal needs of citizens. If all this wood or at least most of it was actually used for construction and repair of the houses of such citizens, there would be no problem of slum dwelling in forest regions of the country”.

In 2013, about 193.5 thousand cubic meters of wood were allocated in the Republic of Tatarstan for preparation of firewood, construction and repair of houses and household buildings. Primarily, forest should ensure comfortable conditions for living in the villages. This is what amendments made to the legislation are mainly aimed at.