Forestry
How extensive the wooded area of the Ukraine is cannot be determined exactly without detailed investigation, [[252]]for the same reason that statistical figures concerning the Ukraine in other fields are difficult to determine. An approximate calculation of the forest surface gives us an area of over 110,000 square kilometers, that is 13% of the entire surface of the country. These figures show us that the Ukraine is one of the more sparsely-wooded countries of Europe. Of all the larger territories of our continent, only England, with its 4%, is poorer in forests. There remain only smaller territories, as Portugal (2.8%), the Netherlands (8%), Denmark (8.3%), Greece (9.3%). So old a land of culture as France still possesses 15.8% forest surface, Germany 25.9%, Hungary 27.4%, Austria 32.7%, Russia 38.8%. Among the large territories, the United States stand nearest to the Ukraine as far as their forest area (10.3%) is concerned.
The causes of the comparative lack of forests in the Ukraine are to be sought, first of all, in the fact that it includes large parts of the steppe region of Eastern Europe. The percentage of forest land in the various regions of the Ukraine show us this most clearly. The mountain regions still retain the highest proportion of forest. The Bukowina has 42% of forest (District of Kimpolung 78%), the Ukrainian region of Northeastern Hungary about 40% (Marmarosh 62%). Then come the Ukrainian regions of the forest zone: Polissye, from Minsk down 38.2%, Volhynia 29.6%, Galicia 25.4%, Grodno 25.5, Podlakhia, starting from Lublin, 25.1%, from Sidletz 19.8%. In the same class, as far as forest area is concerned, the Kuban region seems to stand. Besides the heavily wooded mountain region, this division includes the luhi in the foothill country and the treeless steppes; hence the percentage comes out very small—19.8%. The transition between the forest and the steppe zone is indicated by the following series: Kiev 18%, Chernihiv 15%, Podolia 10.9%, Kharkiv 8.5% of forest area. The steppe regions of the Ukraine have very little [[253]]forest land: Kursk 7.1%, Voroniz 6.8%, Bessarabia 5.8%, Tauria (Yaila forests) 5.7%, Poltava 4.7%, Katerinoslav 2.4%, the Don region the same, Kherson 1.4%, Stavropol 0.3%.
In this distribution of forest we see a certain analogy between the Ukraine and the United States. Here the steppes are treeless, there it is the prairies. Here the forest predominates in the Carpathians, there in the Appalachians; here, just as there, we have zones of transition from forest regions to the steppes. But there is another point of similarity between the Ukraine and the United States—the ruthless exploitation and waste in forestry. This criminal waste is the second main cause for the lack of forests of the Ukraine. It began in the 16th Century and it still continues today. Historical sources mention great forest formations, even in those regions of the Ukraine which are now poor in forests. The “Great Forest” (veliki luh) in the Zaporog land, the “Black Forest” at the sources of the Inhul, the large forests of the Poltava and Kharkiv region, the Derevlan jungles, the gigantic forests on the Buh and Vislok, in the Rostoche, all have either entirely disappeared from the earth’s surface or have changed into miserable remnants, which, at any moment, may fall a final victim to human greed. A host of geographical names, in regions which are almost entirely treeless today, point to former forests. Thick, primitive oak trunks are found in the beds of rivers which flow only thru the treeless steppe-region. In five decades, in the second half of the 19th Century, the forest area of the Government of Kharkiv decreased from 10.9% to 8.5%, in Poltava from 13% to 4.7%, Chernihiv from 17.1% to 15%. Detailed investigations of the ground have proved that the forest area of the District of Poltava was originally 34% (now 7%), of the District of Romny 28% (now 9%) and of the District of Lubni 30% (now 4%). Similar [[254]]conditions of forest devastation prevail everywhere in the Ukraine. Thus, the forest area of Galicia, for example, has decreased by 2000 square kilometers, i.e., almost 3% of the total surface area of the country, in the course of the last century.
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.
The Ukrainian people engage in the Ukrainian lumber industry only as labor-power, while the money profit goes to strangers—great landowners or middlemen. The forest-area which is in the possession of Ukrainian peasants is very small, even in Galicia, where at the time of the removal of the labor tax system, at least small patches of forest came into the possession of the peasant communities. Almost all the forests of the Ukraine belong to the large landowners, the clergy and the national lands.
The lumber industry and the industrial exploitation of the forest products engages but a slight part of the Ukrainian people. In the Russian Ukraine the percentage of such workers is barely 0.1%. In this percentage, however, the entire mass of Ukrainian peasants which seeks its incidental profit in forest work, is not considered. In the Carpathian regions of the Ukraine this percentage increases a hundredfold and more.