Press Release, 25.03.2021

Photo by Creative Commons

Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko, filed a lawsuit against the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region. Shcherbakov asks the regional court to return the boundaries of the Chelyabinsk urban pine forest and its protective zones to the boundaries it had ​​before 2011. According to the contested decisions of the regional parliament, the pine forest lost almost the entire protective zone around its borders.

“The area of ​​the nature protection zone, shrunk from 233.48 hectares by almost 95% – to 14.79 hectares – due to the decision regional deputies in 2011. The narrowing of the borders was done without any environmental expertise; the opinion of the residents of the city was of no interest to the regional deputies,” Yaroslav Shcherbakov noted.

“Thanks to the victory in court of the environmentalist and member of the Yabloko Bureau Andrei Talevlin and Vladimir Kazantsev, a precedent has been created in the court of appeal, confirming the unlawfulness of changing the borders of the pine forest without proper environmental study, and Chelyabinsk residents have a real chance to return the borders of the forest and the protection zone,” the leader of the regional branch of the party said.

The history of changes in the boundaries of a natural landmark and its protected zone from 2010 to 2020 can be traced on our map of the boundaries of the Chelyabinsk urban pine forest.

Activists of the regional branch of the Yabloko party recall that the history of the changes in the borders of the Chelyabinsk urban pine forest for the last 15 years means reduction of its territory under various plausible pretexts in someone’s personal interests. At the moment, the residence of the governor and the house of an oligarch are situated in the forest, hotels, sports and educational facilities, and elite housing are directly adjacent to the forest.