Almost half of the Andriiivskyi forest, which is considered a nature reserve, burned down in the Mykolaiv region in three years

Fire on the territory of the Andriiivskyi forest in the Mykolaiv district, photo: State Emergency Service of the Mykolaiv region

Documents will be re-collected in the Mykolaiv Region in order to withdraw the status of a protected area from the Andriiivskyi tract in the Olshanske community.

This became known at the meeting of the permanent commission on ecology, environmental protection, rational nature management, tourism and recreation, write NikVesti.

The head of the southern office of the state enterprise «Forests of Ukraine» Oleksandr Hrytsai noted that almost 500 hectares of the 1,294 hectares of the forest tract were burned in three years.

According to him, the protected status should be removed from the entire area of the tract and transferred to the status of «exploitation forests» in order to cut down burnt trees and make fire protection strips.

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«If we change the status of the reserve, we will receive for our military, for the population, by making a continuous felling, a fairly large volume of forest products that will be used for the needs of the national economy. And in its place we will plant a forest with the inclusion of deciduous species,» he said.

He noted that a justification has already been made about the impracticality of maintaining the plantation in the status of a tract. The documents were sent to the Ministry of Environment, but there they refused to change the status of the forest.

Oleksandr Hrytsai notes that currently the work on collecting documents is being repeated. According to him, they are currently looking for 1,294 hectares of territories in the region that will replace the Andriivskyi tract and become part of the nature reserve fund of Ukraine. He also added that approximately half of the required territories have already been found and all plots will be found by November 15.

«On this area, we can add steppe areas that we have in the State Forest Fund, expand the boundaries of other nature-reserved objects. The area of the natural reserve fund of the region will not decrease as a result of the fact that we will remove (the protected status of the Andriiivskyi tract, — note) to the category of exploitation forests,» he said.

The head of the Olshanske UTC, Tetiana Shcherbyna, supported the change in the status of the tract and noted that the forest used to be a picturesque place, but now the community is suffering.

«It is necessary to secure the population,» she is sure.

Volodymyr Klochko, the head of the Mykolaiv Regional Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that in general, the burned forest does not pose a significant threat to people's health.

«We are talking about burning wood. The composition of wood includes 40-60% cellulose, 15-35% lignin. The main thing that can be is the content of mineral substances, what will be formed and called ash, but the percentage is insignificant — less than 1% of the composition of wood. This ash content will be determined by the content of calcium and magnesium in the soil, which are not regulated according to the order of the Ministry of Health,» he said.

At the same time, Alla Riazhskykh, head of the environmental commission of the Mykolaiv Regional Council, added that the Ministry of Environment does not understand the scale of the problem, so it is necessary to collect as many documents as possible and show the whole picture.

At the meeting of the commission, they decided to wait for «Forests of Ukraine» to find areas that will replace the forest tract in the status of reserves, as well as to conduct a study of the soil, air and underground water on the territory of the burned forest.

Earlier it was reported that 366.6 hectares of protected areas were burned in the Andriiivskyi tract in the Mykolaiv Region in two years.

We will remind, on the evening of August 10, 2024, the rescuers were informed that coniferous flooring and dry grass were burning on the territory of the Andriiivskyi tract, which is in the Olshanske Territorial Community of the Mykolaiv District.

On the morning of August 11, firefighters reported that 5 units of equipment of the State Emergency Service units and foresters are taking turns. A quadcopter was also involved to monitor the situation from the air and prevent re-ignition.