Such reforms have already begun in Karelia, local forest enterprises will get desired powers to manage forest areas. It might cause new serious problems with oldgrowth forests conservation and creation of new protected areas because regional timber businessmen are not willing to give up. To hinder a new round of arguments around oldgrowth forests Karelian authorities continue with their campaign against the greens. Russian greens are accused of degradation of regional economy and unemployment. All the argumentation is very old and well known, but it still works.
Karelian officials don t have any sence of international market trends.
Even after they lose some western partners they didn t do anything to change traditional forest management to more environment friendly and economically sustainable one. Former Director of Russian Forest Service Vladimir Shubin publicized his view on the current situation in Russian forestry. He disagrees with new idea of Russian government to increase in half annual ammounts of harvested woods. Mikhail Kas yanov, Head of Russian Government issued an order to harvest more wood and send it to processing facilities which stand idle very often. According to Shubin this order is designed to help forest procesing companies to make quick money and to share it with state bodies.