Illegal logging has doubled since 1992 in Russia, which contains a quarter of the world's forest land, according to new official figures. The country must take the offensive in the fight against the loss of the forests, a government official said Thursday.
The deforestation now stands at over 700,000 cubic metres per year, according to the official figures. Even these figures are "lower than reality", said Valeri Roshchupkin, head of the federal agency for forest resources.
Two-thirds of Russian territory is covered by forest.
The worst-affected areas are in the export zones bordering Europe, Finland, China and Japan, he added.
"Russia now places great importance on the fight against illegal logging. We have taken concrete measures and we are not hiding the fact, we are now adopting an offensive attitude."
The country, covering 11 time zones and some 1,162 billion hectares, has been moving towards satellite detection alongside the more traditional air surveillance to counter the problem.
Next year it is hoped that the surveillance efforts will cover all of Russia, as opposed to 60 percent this year.
Forest fires, man-made or otherwise, are a great problem. Nowadays 69 percent of such fires are mastered within a day, as opposed to eight percent in 2003, according to the official figures.
