Ukraine, the land and its people : $b an introduction to its geographyRudnytskyi, Stepan
Science
Ukraine, the land and its people : $b an introduction to its geography
Rudnytskyi, Stepan
Ukraine; Ukrainians
We have already frequently called attention to the sad results of this criminal waste
for the entire land. But, because of the low grade of culture of the nations dominating
the Ukraine, the Polish nation and the Russian, no attention is paid to the fatal
results of forest destruction. The forests are recklessly cut down for lumber, and
year by year the scarcity of wood is being felt in most regions of the Ukraine. Only
in Podlakhia, Volhynia, Polissye, and in the mountain regions of the Ukraine, is there
no scarcity of wood. The three cubic meters of wood which, on the average, are due
every inhabitant of the Ukraine, are not easily accessible to more than one-fifth
of the Ukrainians. At the same time, the forests of the Ukraine are, as a rule, badly
managed. Even in the Austro-Hungarian parts of the Ukraine there are very few professional
foresters; in Galicia for example, 250 to 800. Conditions are still worse in the Russian-Ukraine. Consequently, the forest does
not grow up again very well, and a great deal of wood is simply ruined. This happens
chiefly in the mountain forests of the Carpathians, where hundreds of thousands of
cubic meters of wood decay every year. In the regions which are poor in forests, the
products of the woods are carefully and economically used, so that, for instance,
from one hectare of forest in the Poltava region, 11.5 cubic meters of wood are produced
every year; in the region of Katerinoslav, 7 cubic meters. Of the production of the
Ukrainian forest, building wood constitutes only a comparatively small part. There
is a crushing preponderance of firewood, especially in the regions which are poor
in forests. Building wood, in large quantities, comes from the forests [255]of the Polissye and of the Carpathians only. The export of building wood from Galicia
and the Bukowina reached a million and a half cubic meters annually at the end of
the century. The export of wood from the Polissye, starting from Minsk, exceeded 900,000
cubic meters. The complete production of Galicia in the year 1900 was 3,660,000 cubic
meters of building wood and an equal quantity of firewood.
The reclaiming of forests, even in the Austrian Ukraine, where it is required by law,
is not properly administered. It is still worse in the Russian Ukraine. Hence, the
forest surface of the Ukraine is constantly decreasing instead of remaining unchanged
or even increasing, as usually happens in the cultured lands of Europe. And yet, the
Ukraine is one of those countries in which the forest problem is a life problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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