Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, and Mykolaiv regions top the ranking of regions with the lowest volume of Illegal logging!

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.