The dissertation is devoted to comprehension of the phenomenon of illegal logging, reasons of its existence and reproduction and development of a complex of measures of prevention of its manifestations. Illegal felling of forests is considered as a kind of criminal practice connected with organized criminal business on the illegal export of wood, illegal production of charcoal, unauthorized harvesting of firewood, and also the extraction of amber.
Forests in Ukraine perform natural-protective functions and have a limited operational significance. However, real practice shows the commercial direction of forestry and export orientation and the receipt of foreign exchange earnings. More than 90 percent of the revenues of forest enterprises make profits from the sale of business and fuel wood in the domestic and foreign markets. For export, commercial wood is exported under the kind of fuel, timber, made from unprocessed timber and charcoal. In the domestic market, technological wood and firewood are mostly consumed. The increased demand for timber is satisfied by the legal harvesting of timber, as well as the illegal felling of forests. In general, illegal logging in Ukraine is due to three key issues: illegal timber trade, including the export of timber, lumber and other timber products; self-purchase of wood by households; Related types of organized criminal business (illegal production of charcoal, illegal mining of amber). To solve them there is a lack of political will, and the efforts of civil society are clearly not enough.
It is believed that the illegal felling of the forest acts as the primary link of illegal forestry activities. In fact, it refers to criminal practice, or a persistent, substantially oriented type of occupation of a large number of people in order to meet material needs and obtaining illicit income. Violation of rules for felling trees and shrubs entails the illegal origin of wood in the chain of supply from the forest to the buyer, including transportation, storage, purchase and sale (release into free circulation).
The general conclusion is made that in Ukraine the gross volume of wood raw material harvesting is provided by specialized forestry enterprises for the purpose of illegal export to the countries of the European Union and further processing.
Another problem is the spontaneous self-harvesting of wood by households in linear protective shrubs to meet personal (domestic) needs, as well as for the purpose of marketing. The large share of timber of illegal origin is sold to underground private sawmills and illegal producers of charcoal.
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It was established that during the period of 2008-2017 the number of registered cases of illegal tracing increased by more than 3.5 times. These crimes became the most widespread in the structure of crimes against the environment. Illegal logging is mainly carried out in forests of state ownership and linear protective shrubs. Much of the latter is messy. Given these circumstances, the actual level of the investigated crimes can be much higher. The tendency of comparatively more frequent committing of these crimes in the autumn-winter heating season and on Christmas and New Year holidays (58.6 percent), as well as regional distribution in territories with a high degree of forests (western and northern Ukraine), is established. Negative dynamics and high growth rates of illegal felling of the forest indicate a significant increase in the volume of illegal timber harvesting in Ukraine for the period under study.
The main causes of illegal logging are the state monopoly on harvesting, processing and sale of wood, ineffective forest management, increased demand for wood of illegal origin on the external and internal markets, traditions of unauthorized logging of the forest among the rural population.
Proposals for prevention of illegal felling of the forest are developed, which in general are reduced to electronic monitoring of the state of harvesting and sale of timber, the impossibility of selling illegally acquired timber, solving socio-economic problems of rural inhabited points in the forest area, prosecution of criminals.
