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In spring, the foresters’ primary task is planting the forest, while summer is the season for tending young trees.

Since the launch of the President’s “Green Country” programme, the area under forest planting has increased and, accordingly, so has the number of tending operations. It should be noted that approximately 100,000 ha of non-closed forest stands require maintenance, as such tending is essential to create favourable growing conditions and to timely reclassify these plots as lands covered by forest vegetation.

Currently, agrotechnical works are underway on these plots. We are removing herbaceous and shrub vegetation that impedes the growth and development of plants. Its proliferation was especially promoted by the rainy weather in most regions at the end of spring and in June. In areas with less rainfall (the east and the south), we are loosening the soil around the plants—this allows more moisture to reach the trees’ root systems.

Depending on weather conditions and the level of weed infestation, such measures are planned on average 3–4 times per year.

In the first half of 2025, forest-crop tending and natural regeneration works were carried out on 50,500 ha of the enterprise’s forest estate, amounting to 117 % of the planned volume.

What are the main trends in forest-crop tending operations?

– The share of mechanized tending operations is rising, now accounting for 90 % of all work.

– Specialized equipment that does not damage young trees is employed, boosting productivity and efficiency, especially over large areas.

– Thanks to increased mechanization, the cost of operations is falling.

– Timely forest-crop tending enhances seedling survival rates

This year’s investment plan of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” provides for the procurement of 156 units of soil‐cultivation equipment for forest‐crop tending.

“As of the end of the second quarter, the enterprise’s revenue from the sale of unprocessed timber reached UAH 8.9 billion.

“Forests of Ukraine” increased contributions to the state and local budgets by 40%! Tax payments in the first half of the year rose by over UAH 1.7 billion compared to the same period in 2024!

Post-tax profit is used to purchase new firefighting equipment (including 10 large fire trucks in the immediate plans), to develop modern seed centers and supporting infrastructure (forest roads, recreation sites, etc.), to restore forestry enterprises on de-occupied territories, and to mechanize harvesting (harvesters, forwarders, tractors, etc.).

The semi-annual contracts introduced at the initiative of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” management have proven highly successful. Under the forward contracts, buyers took delivery of the entire timber volume achieving a fulfillment rate of 101%!

Thanks to the forward contracts, wood processors can reserve the volume of raw material they need and lock in the price. The enterprise also benefits: the security deposit, refunded only after 97 % contract fulfillment, motivates buyers to take the entire contracted volume.

Next year, the share of forward contracts will be increased, with annual contracts also planned.

Under quarterly contracts for the second quarter, more than 95% of timber was shipped, which is a very high indicator, given the specifics of the sales system (unharvested timber is sold at auction) and the terms of the contracts (the buyer has the right to select up to 90% of the volume).

Most instances of non-fulfillment are attributable to buyers, who either refuse the goods or fail to make payment on time.

SFE “Forests of Ukraine” applies a flexible settlement policy, recognizing that producers may face working capital constraints since they do not receive immediate payment for the timber products they deliver.

But there are limits. Therefore, on occasion, the enterprise must suspend deliveries until the buyer settles outstanding debts, which to some extent impacts the contract fulfillment rate. Nevertheless, these are isolated incidents.

Overall, the timber market is currently balanced. The rapid appreciation of the euro has significantly strengthened Ukrainian exporters’ positions, so the forecasts for the second half of the year are more than optimistic,” says Yurii Bolokhovets.

“Many of them have received the highest state honours.

Today we warmly congratulate our forest master from the Drohobytske Forestry Management Unit of SFE “Forests of Ukraine,” Dmytro Khomin, on being awarded the “Golden Cross” distinction.”

Dmytro is one of those who, on the very first day of the full-scale invasion, voluntarily took up arms to defend Ukraine. He is currently carrying out combat missions with the 80th Air Assault Brigade.

He stopped the enemy in the Mykolaiv Region, took part in the counteroffensive in the Kherson Region, participated in the defense of Kreminna, in the operation in the Kursk Region, and in the defense of the Sumy Region.

On more than ten occasions, together with the Union Of Forestry Warriors Of Ukraine, they have sent Dmytro aid—radio stations, Starlink terminals, generators, charging stations, thermal imagers, quadcopters, an off-road vehicle, and other equipment.

This is not his first award. Last year, for the successful execution of combat missions and the preservation of his unit in challenging situations, Dmytro was honored with the “Cross of the Brave” distinction.

“We are incredibly proud!” said Yurii Bolokhovets.

The Security Department of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” has summed up its results for the first half of 2025.

The fewest incidents of illegal logging were recorded in Branch “Pivdennyi Forest Office” covering Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, and in Branch “Podilskyi Forest Office” in Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi regions.

The extent of damage in the regions mentioned is minimal.

Nearly half of all illegal logging occurs in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

This year, SFE “Forests of Ukraine” integrated the Kharkiv state forestry enterprises from de-occupied territories, forming the Izyumske Forestry Management Unit on their basis. Inspections of these newly incorporated enterprises uncovered large-scale violations — the Security Department of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” has forwarded all case materials to law enforcement. Investigative authorities are now determining who, and on what grounds, felled thousands of cubic meters of timber.

The statistics for the Dnipropetrovsk Region reflect the limited access of the forest protection service to many forest areas, as the region is on the frontline.

This very factor applies to virtually all border regions—Sumy, Chernihiv, and so on.

In some rear regions, there is another problem—illegal loggers. At the end of last year, near the village of Yasinia in Rakhiv District, the police, together with the Security Department of SFE “Forests of Ukraine,” apprehended a group of local residents who had organized an illicit operation. They felled and transported up to 1,000 m³ of timber to nearby village sawmills. The damage is estimated at UAH 40 million. This is several times higher than the total losses recorded for the region in the first half of 2025. It is the consequences of such gangs’ activities, addressable only by law enforcement agencies, that drive the grim statistics on illegal logging.

How has the overall situation with illegal logging changed?

Data from the State Forest Resources Agency of Ukraine indicate that the average annual figures have remained more or less unchanged year-on-year.

The results for the first half of 2025 are unlikely to be an exception.

In fact, the forest protection service now records volumes of illegal logging that are three to four times lower than during the ten years preceding the establishment of SFE “Forests of Ukraine”.

Everything else is the result of the work of our internal security service. Prior to the forestry reform, there was simply no such structure as internal security focused on the systematic detection of violations. Today, its officers record what was previously concealed and did not appear in the official statistics.

Thus, the public has finally begun to see the real figures on illegal logging, rather than the fiction that had been “painted” in reports for decades.

Consequently, the answer is unequivocal: the situation is improving and oversight is tightening. However, there remain factors that foresters operating under martial law conditions cannot control.

The 49th Separate Assault Battalion “Karpatska Sich” is holding the line on the Toretsk direction, where fierce fighting continues. Delivering ammunition and provisions to the front for assault units has become markedly more challenging. Military vehicles are being hunted by enemy FPV drones and hit by artillery.

Ground‐based wheeled drones can help address this challenge. Most brigades are fielding them. These mini remote‐controlled transporters can reach speeds of up to 80 km/h and carry loads of up to 150 kg. Their key advantage is low visibility. Furthermore, losing a ground drone is far less painful than losing personnel.

The battalion is increasingly using such ground drones. However, they are not satisfied with the quality of the models supplied to the military unit. Broken equipment poses greater risks. It must be evacuated to the rear manually.

Within the battalion, there is a platoon responsible for servicing and repairing unmanned systems. Using their own repair facility, they can repair damaged drones and assemble new ones simultaneously. However, they lack specialized equipment and must rely on standard welding machines and other basic tools. This is inefficient, as repairs take a considerable amount of time.

Drawing on the experience of other brigades, the soldiers decided to establish a professional workshop of their own.

The 49th Separate Assault Battalion sent a request to SFE “Forests of Ukraine,” and we responded. The Union of Forestry Warriors Of Ukraine joined the effort, sourcing the necessary tools and equipment directly from manufacturers.

Currently additional quipment is being procured. Beyond the basic tool set, the mini-factory will include a drill-bit sharpening machine, a screw-cutting lathe, a belt-sanding machine, a plasma-cutting unit, and more. The total cost exceeds UAH 7 million.

What are other advantages of in-house production of ground drones:

-Producing ground drones in-house is twice as cheap.

-The mini-factory will increase productivity fivefold.

The handover will take place soon!

Since last year, SFE “Forests of Ukraine” has begun substantially upgrading not only its vehicle fleet but also its motorcycle transport. In 2024, it procured 74 modern Yamaha motorcycles. The majority were dispatched to the forestry units of its resource-rich branches—Pivnichnyi, Stolychnyi and Poliskyi Forest Offices.

Why motorcycles?

Because they offer speed, off-road capability, and operational control. Where a car cannot go, a motorcycle allows you to:

– Quickly reach a harvesting site or deep forest area via narrow paths and steep slopes.

– Respond promptly to fires—motorcycles arrive at the ignition point within five minutes, and small blazes can be immediately contained using backpack sprayers.

– Monitor harvesting legality—from on-site inspections to warehouse inventory.

– Monitor hard-to-access areas—identifying tree diseases or illegal logging has become much easier.

Advantages of the motorcycle:

Mobility: compact, all-terrain, and fast—ideal for off-road conditions.

Cost-efficiency: A motorcycle’s purchase price is roughly ten times lower than that of a vehicle. Foresters spend less on maintenance, and a motorcycle consumes only 3–4 L of fuel per 100 km, compared to 10–15 L for a car.

Simplicity of maintenance: can be refueled from a jerrycan and require minimal upkeep costs.

Eco-friendliness: with lower fuel consumption, these motorcycles produce correspondingly fewer exhaust emissions, reducing their environmental impact.

Foresters are pleased with this upgrade. In particular, at Chernihivske Forestry Management Unit, which received five motorcycles last year, they say these bikes are an excellent complement to their vehicle fleet and praise their effectiveness.

Based on last year’s experience and the high demand for motorcycle transport in other regions, this year’s investment plan provides for the procurement of 211 motorcycles.

In addition to the resource‐rich branches, the motorcycles will also be deployed to Karpatskyi Forest Office, where the greatest number of hard-to-reach areas exists, and at the South.

Over the past two years, our specialists carried out field trials of laser‐scanning capabilities using equipment supplied by a specialized company. These trials were conducted in both coniferous and deciduous stands. We confirmed that this technology enables accurate modeling of forest‐stand structures and compared the performance of various types of LiDAR scanners.

This year, the enterprise purchased its own scanning equipment.

At the Boyarka Forest Research Station, a separate unit of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NUBiP), employees of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” demonstrated the significant capabilities of laser‐scanning technology with simultaneous tree mapping (SLAM) in pine stands.

– The technology enables the identification of all trees with a stem diameter of 2 cm or bigger.

– Data processing in specialized software makes it possible to determine timber volume, the height, and diameters of individual trees, as well as the average stand height with 100 % accuracy.

– The use of a handheld laser scanner replaces several traditional instruments at once, such as a caliper, measuring tape, altimeter, and photo-video documentation tools. Scanning a 0.5 ha pine stand with LiDAR took 15 minutes, whereas measuring tree diameters over the same area using a caliper required over an hour. This will shorten the duration and reduce the cost of forest inventory operations.

– Automated timber‐volume assessment eliminates human error and prevents unaccounted timber.

– A single person operates the handheld laser scanner, whereas traditional forest inventory methods require a team.

“We are currently finalizing a methodology for conducting operational forest inventories. Scientists from NUBiP provided us with inventory data for plots that we surveyed using mobile laser scanning. Once we process the scan results in the specialized software, we will compare them against the reference data and develop an algorithm to calculate the key metrics needed for our operational activities,” says Olha Moroziuk, Manager of the Digitalization and IT Systems Development Division, Development and IT Department, SFE “Forests of Ukraine.”

Immediately upon completing the research and developing the software‐use algorithms, the equipment will be deployed in our branches. We also plan to procure an airborne laser‐scanning system. By combining 360° ground imagery with aerial scanning, we will generate a highly accurate digital 3D model of the forest massif.

The Director General of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” Yurii Bolokhovets visited Branch “Pivnichnyi Forest Office.” Together with the team, he discussed the key issue for this border region: the safety of all employees.

Currently, a significant portion of the branch’s staff works in the city of Sumy—just 30 km from the border.

Shelling, sabotage raids by enemy reconnaissance groups, damaged administrative buildings, and risky trips into the forest are daily realities for the forestry units in the Sumy Region. This forces them to take a different approach to organizing their work.

The key question is how to keep people while maintaining production processes.

Each employee decides for themselves whether to stay or relocate. Our task is to provide them with choice and support.

Among the possible solutions:

– transfer to a branch unit in a safer part of the Sumy Region;

– reassignment to units in the Chernihiv Region;

– transfer to other branches of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” in other regions.

Such examples already exist: employees from the Sumy Region are relocating with their families to Slobozhanshchyna or to the central part of Ukraine and continuing their work. This allows them to remain in their profession while safeguarding their loved ones.

The Director General emphasized the need to develop a remote‐working regime for the branch’s staff. The enemy has been halted and pushed back, but the risk of intensified shelling of Sumy remains.

Most employees of SFE “Forests of Ukraine” in the Sumy Region remain at their posts. Those who continue working in the combat zone are eligible for a 20 % bonus.

Not everyone can or wants to leave — and that’s okay. But we must have a plan in case of any developments.

New forest-firefighting modules will be deployed to the Ivano-Frankivske, Nadvirnyanske, Kolomyiske, Skolivske, Sambirske, Rakhivske, Mizhhirske, and Khustske Forestry Management Units.

The greatest need for forest‐firefighting modules is in the mountainous areas of Zakarpattia. This year, there was an abnormally warm and low‐snow winter here, and spring began with drought and a sudden temperature rise. Over two weeks in March, three large forest fires, each covering 7 to 17 ha, occurred in Mizhhirske Forestry Management Unit. The State Emergency Service assisted foresters in combating the blazes, but suppression was hampered by the fact that large‐scale equipment could not access the high‐altitude terrain.

A similar situation arose this spring in Radehivske and Skolinske Forestry Management Units in Lviv Region.

Only mobile, compact equipment such as pickups fitted with forest firefighting modules can reach those inaccessible areas. Karpatskyi Forest Office had 18 forest firefighting modules. Of the 21 Forestry Management Units, only 6 were equipped with such modules, and the entire Zakarpattia Region had just one.

The new equipment will significantly enhance rapid response to ignitions. Forest firefighting modules can be mounted on a pickup in two minutes and fully deployed on-site in three minutes. Crew: two people.

A forest firefighting module mounted on a pickup can access remote, hard-to-reach areas where large vehicles cannot. The modules hold 500–600 liters of water, sufficient to extinguish fires of up to 0.5–1 ha.

As a reminder, under this year’s investment plan of SFE “Forests of Ukraine,” the procurement of 28 forest firefighting modules is envisaged. Of these, 25 have already been acquired for the Forestry Units of Skhidnyi, Tsentralnyi, Pivdennyi, Pivnichnyi, Karpatskyi, and Stolychnyi Forest Offices. The remaining three modules will be procured at the regional level by the Stolychnyi Forest Office.

Branch “Skhidnyi Forest Office” tripled its timber harvesting in the second quarter. Over Q2, the branch sold more than 4,000 m³ of timber.

In Q2 2025, Skhidnyi Forest Office sold 1,800 m³ of firewood to household consumers. In all forestry units of the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions where harvesting takes place, firewood of all categories, both hardwood and softwood, is available in ample supply and freely accessible.

A difficult situation exists in the frontline forestry units, where harvesting is temporarily impossible due to their proximity to the front line, namely Huliaipilske (Zaporizhzhia Region) and Velykomykhailivske and Mezhivske forestry units (Dnipropetrovsk Region). Employees’ families have been evacuated to safer areas. However, the workers continue to commute and perform their duties on-site. If the situation deteriorates further, they will be offered vacant positions at other forestry units.

Since the beginning of the year, operations have been suspended at the Nikopolske, Marhanetske, and Apostolivske forestry units. Skhidnyi Forest Office has appealed to local authorities with a proposal to partially restore their operations. Residents are being supplied with firewood from other forestry units, but the greater distances increase the final cost.

Given that the region is resource-poor, its own revenues from timber sales are insufficient to sustain operations. Therefore, SFE “Forests of Ukraine” provides extensive support with equipment for wildfire suppression, forest-crop maintenance, and timber harvesting. In particular, the branch recently received six forest firefighting modules, now mounted on pickups, and five hydraulic grapples for tractors used in timber skidding.

Skhidnyi Forest Office is also working toward self-sufficiency: tighter control over timber allocations and harvesting has boosted merchantable timber output by 30%, and the share of industrial use firewood sold through the exchange has also increased.