Road infrastructure

When I was studying forestry they really drilled into us the importance of good road infrastructure for forest management. Working in Maine I was able to see some good examples, but it is especially stark here in the Carpathians. I learned early on at the lishosp that practically no new forest roads have been built on this territory since the fall of the Soviet Union. But this does not mean that large areas of the lishosp have been inaccessible. On the contrary, they've reached almost every place that's not too steep to cut. They do this be using mountain streams as logging roads. I found this pretty shocking when I first saw it, but have learned that it is very common in the Carpathians, and makes forest management possible in a lot of unroaded areas.

It has some pretty clear ecological consequences, though. At the least, the weight of the skidders and log trucks distorts the streambed, often destroying the natural stream structure and creating two channels (in the tiretracks). Much worse than this, a series of skid roads run straight into the stream. In these steep conditions these skid roads often turn into mini-muslides. The skidders and trucks rip up the streamside vegetation, allowing for even more soil movement into the stream. In the most extreme example I have seen, a steep slope above a small stream was clearcut directly to the stream bank. The logs were then rolled down the slope, and picked up by a log truck parked in the stream. This only 100 yards from the site of a recent mudslide. 

I have talked with some foresters here about this, but it is a very touchy subject. If the use of these small streams for logging was prohibited, it would put most of their territory off limits to exploitation. I have come to see this as the most negative aspect of forest management here, in unfortunate contrast the many good aspects such as the system of protected areas. In fact, there is even an excellent network of riparian protective zones within the lishosp. But these are focused on the main river (Prut) and its largest tributaries. Small streams (potoki) are unprotected and treated more like transportation routes than natural water bodies. As a result, plumes of mud flow into the Prut from these streams whenever there is an ongoing logging operation. It is important to note that forestry is not alone in this problem - there appear to be few limits on streamside construction, and I often see big areas of floodplain stripped of vegetation to build new hotels. The ski resort Bukovel (Ukraine's biggest, within the lishosp where I work) is the biggest offender. Thanks to a huge amount of new construction there, the Prutets River (the Prut's biggest tributary) runs brown almost constantly. 

Some money is beginning to trickle into Carpathian lishospi to build new roads. I worked a few days with Volodymyr Korzhov, a forest roads specialists from the Institute of Mountain Forestry in Ivano-Frankivsk. He travels around the Oblast helping lishospi design new mountain roads to "Austrian" standards. As he told me, the quality of the road on the ground is often much worse than what he designed on the map. But at least these roads are not located in a stream! He took me to Osmolodske Lishosp, deep in the Gorgany Mountains on the Ivano-Frankivsk/Zakarpattye border. There we saw a beautiful new "Austrian" road that is being built into the Gorgany. I admired the quality, but also had to wonder what the new accessibility this road brings will mean to remote forests of the Gorgany... I think this territory would be a great place to do high conservation value forest delineation, before the logging starts.