How can Russia protect its forests from fire?

Russia must better protect its forests from fires, environmentalists said, after a new study showed that Russia is losing several million hectares of tree cover each year.

A third of all trees lost worldwide between 2011 and 2013 were in the northern boreal forests of Russia and Canada, which suffered a “massive spike” in tree loss, according to data from the University of Maryland and Google.

Russia and Canada, two of the world’s biggest forest countries, lost a combined average of nearly 6.8 million hectares (26,000 square miles) of trees each year, an area equivalent to the size of Ireland.

Russia, with the disappearance of an annual 4.3 million hectares, suffered nearly double the tree cover loss of Canada, with 2.5 million hectares, said the study released on Thursday by Global Forest Watch, a partnership led by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

“These forests and soils contain vast carbon stocks, so losses represent a significant contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change,” said Nigel Sizer, director of WRI’s forests programme.

He urged governments working towards a new global climate change deal in Paris this December to pay more attention to the management and monitoring of boreal forests.

According to the study, some of the tree cover loss is only temporary, as forests can regenerate after the fires that have caused much of the damage. But this could be a very slow process in the boreal regions, it added.

Fires accounted for around 70 percent of total tree cover loss in Canada and Russia in recent years, the WRI said.

In some regions, boreal forests are burning more now than at any time in the last 10,000 years. Researchers expect that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of such forest fires, releasing carbon emissions by burning trees and peat soils.

“Forest fires have been and remain the most significant factor in forest resources disappearing,” said Nikolay Shmatkov, head of WWF Russia’s forestry programme.

Fires worse than logging

Alexander Bryukhanov, a forestry expert based in Krasnoyarsk, southern Siberia, said that in Siberia and Russia’s Far East, annual loss of tree cover is much higher from forest fires than from logging.

In Russia’s largest region, Yakutia, for example – which is larger than Argentina – areas razed by forest fires each year are a few hundred times larger than areas where forests are destroyed by logging or mining, he said.

Low volumes of snow and early melting, together with close to zero rainfall last winter, have created favourable conditions in many parts of Russia for spring forest fires this year.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 200 forest fires have been registered on more than 18,000 hectares, according to Russia’s state forestry agency Roslekhoz.

In 2014, fires destroyed more than 3 million hectares of Russian forests, its figures show.

“The official data is usually lower than the real figures – according to satellite data, the total surface area of forest fires in Russia in 2014 was approximately two times bigger,” Shmatkov said.

Greenpeace Russia says some types of fires, including burning of trees on agricultural land, are not registered. And there are almost no statistics on the harm forest fires cause to nature and people, the green group argues.

Weak fire fighting

Greenpeace Russia’s Alexey Yaroshenko said bans on burning grass – a common cause of forest fires – are often violated, especially in Central Russia, while state controls on lighting fires in natural areas are weak.

Experts say the state should step up measures to tackle the growing number of forest fires.

“This should be a clear call to action to look closely at forest management in Russia and Canada in the face of climate change,” said Olga Gershenzon, board chair of Transparent World, a Russian NGO, and founder of ScanEx, a Russian commercial satellite imagery company and Global Forest Watch partner.

There is no united system to fight forest fires in natural areas of Russia, said Greenpeace’s Yaroshenko. Systems built in Soviet times are in disarray due to inadequate state support, or on the verge of collapse.

“Our forestry legislation has been chaotically amended over the last few years, so that duties are often ‘lost’ between various state federal and regional institutions, while the culprits escape their responsibilities,” Yaroshenko said.

WWF’s Shmatkov said the problem would likely worsen due to climate change, with earlier springs, less rainfall and longer droughts.

He lamented the low level of sustainable forest management in Russia, due to a shortage of state finance and private-sector interest.

Gershenzon called for improvements in monitoring and understanding the causes and types of forest fires, as well as making information about fires available to the public in real time along with maps of land allocation and responsibility.

There are some signs of progress in specific regions, environmentalists say.

After a public campaign by Greenpeace following large forest fires in February and March this year, the Tverskaya and Bryanskaya regions in Central Russia adopted a more active approach to fighting forest fires, strengthening coordination between public bodies to tackle the problem, Yaroshenko said.

This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Angelina Davydova is a St. Petersburg-based freelance writer for the Thomson Reuters Foundation with an interest in environmental issues.