The news that O. M. Savchenko, head of the Ananiv Forestry Enterprise, had been notified of suspicion under Article 365(3) of Ukraine’s Criminal Code was long awaited byZelenyi Lyst .

Damage from illegal logging in Odesa Oblast’s Kuialnytskyi National Nature Park reached 79 million hryvnias from just one incident documented by the State Bureau of Investigation. There are other episodes of logging carried out under the scheme introduced by the Ananiv Forestry Enterprise of the state enterprise Forests of Ukraine.

As reported by the Office of the Prosecutor General, the scheme involved illegally issuing logging permits for felling on land belonging to protected natural areas. Clearly, this is unlikely to be the last notice of suspicion in this investigation. But I want to tell you about something else.

This investigation is remarkable not only for the enormous damage inflicted on nature. It is unique in the synergy between law enforcement, scientists and civil society representatives outraged by such ecocide.

For the Zelenyi Lyst civic organisation, the story began in late winter 2023, when former forester and environmental activist Yurii Nezhyvyi called me. With pain in his voice, he began describing the destruction of a unique oak forest, planted in the time of Count Potocki, in the village of Severynivka.

The felling was taking place on an industrial scale, and not for the first year. The foresters had logging permits in hand and feared nothing. They selected the healthiest and most beautiful 200-year-old giant oaks.

Imagine our surprise when we retrieved the map from the project to establish Kuialnytskyi National Nature Park and discovered that trees were being felled in the unique Nyzhnii Lis (‘Lower Forest’) tract, which lies within the park’s boundaries.

For decades, environmental activists and scientists fought to establish Kuialnytskyi National Nature Park. Doctor of Biological Sciences I. T. Rusev, Candidate of Biological Sciences O. M. Popova and the team at Tuzlivski Lymany National Nature Park played a major role in developing its scientific justification and project documentation. The Zelenyi Lyst team also took an active part in this work. The approval and signing of the documents happened practically before our eyes.

Protection at the regional level: Pavlo Bulanovych

I can therefore say with complete confidence that such brazen ecocide became possible only through the personal involvement of Pavlo Bulanovych, then director of the Ecology Department of the Odesa Regional State Administration, in collusion with V. I. Domikan, then head of the Odesa Regional Forestry and Hunting Administration. It is telling that for many years Bulanovych could be found online under the tag “Pasha 500”. Moreover, he was removed from office under lustration legislation back in 2015, only to reappear later in senior positions. Did anyone really expect Pasha to live on his salary? And in two years as head of the regional Ecology Department, Pasha caused plenty of damage: providing cover for development schemes in protected natural areas, land fraud and organised poaching, including illegal logging. Even the removal of the beautiful blue spruces in front of the regional administration building in 2021 was justified by Bulanovych together with Domikan on Hrynevetskyi’s orders — and that was the least harmful of it. I would very much like former officials to be held accountable before the law in our country, and certainly not to reappear later with their ill-gotten gains ‘somewhere in a ministry’.

Assisting the investigation

After consulting Iryna Vykhrystiuk and Ivan Rusev, we immediately contacted Oleh Steshenko, a police officer in the Criminal Investigation Department who has experience uncovering such crimes. It was one of those rare occasions when, after we had made contact, it was not us constantly chasing the investigators for updates; instead, they were chasing us.

My first visit to the Nyzhnii Lis tract was simply astonishing. I had never seen such tall and beautiful woodland in Odesa Oblast. There is nothing else like it here. Every giant oak seemed carefully selected. Huge ash trees, acacias. An incredible and fascinating forest.

Just imagine: it lies at the very head of the Kuialnyk Estuary, on the floodplain of the Velykyi Kuialnyk River upstream of its entry into the estuary. Today, the Velykyi Kuialnyk has dried up along much of its course. Wheat is grown on its floodplain, and its lower reach has disappeared underground. High groundwater levels and moisture created conditions here for woodland growth that are unique and uncharacteristic of our steppe zone.

But this landscape has another value beyond its aesthetics and biodiversity. We must also consider the forest’s water-management and anti-erosion functions, and its role in maintaining the Kuialnyk Estuary’s water balance. Of course, such a small stretch of woodland relative to the river’s length cannot save the situation on its own, but without it the estuary’s degradation would accelerate significantly. Indeed, its value and biodiversity are precisely why the Nyzhnii Lis tract was included in Kuialnytskyi National Nature Park, whose establishment was approved by the President on 1 January 2022.

The sheer brazenness of the destruction of this unique forest — by officials who receive salaries to protect it, no less — strongly motivated both us and law enforcement. The logging continued even as investigative activities were under way, which significantly accelerated the investigation.

The stage in which I personally took a direct part gave me a deep tan well before summer arrived. I could not now tell you how many times we travelled to Severynivka, or how many dozens of kilometres we trudged through the forest with the investigative team looking for stumps. Every stump was georeferenced and photographed; its dimensions, tree species and approximate date of felling were recorded. The Environmental Prosecutor’s Office brought in biology specialists, including Olena Popova, a botanist at Odesa Mechnikov National University. Investigators from the State Bureau of Investigation standardised the data-collection spreadsheet, while environmental inspectors and criminal investigators streamlined the search for stumps and their photographic documentation.

By the end of this stage, our team had become a first-rate team for investigating environmental crimes. Every member, including the attesting witnesses, could identify the species of a felled tree with their eyes closed. Olena Popova and I completed our work as consulting biologists in two weeks. But we also saw the prolonged, meticulous work carried out by investigators and prosecutors from the specialised environmental prosecutor’s office.

One of Zelenyi Lyst’s missions is to help develop successful practice in investigating environmental crimes of this kind and proving them in court. I am confident that those responsible will be punished in this case.

Vladyslav Balinskyi, environmentalist and head of the Zelenyi Lyst civic organisation