Chairman of Ha Tinh Provincial People's Committee Vo Trong Hai affirmed: In recent times, forest management and protection work has been generally implemented synchronously and promptly, contributing to maintaining stable forest environmental security.
However, in some areas, illegal logging still occurs, especially in natural forests and coastal protection forests.
The Provincial People's Committee requests communes and wards with forests to strengthen state management of forests and forestry land; regularly review and identify key areas that are vulnerable to deploy patrol, inspection and close supervision forces; promptly detect and strictly handle violations, prevent forests from being encroached upon or cut down.
The functional departments and branches such as local forest rangers, police, military, security and order protection forces at the grassroots level... are assigned the task of closely coordinating with local authorities and forest owners to monitor, protect forests at the origin and inspect forest exploitation and processing activities.
The Department of Agriculture and Environment directs forest rangers to continue to closely monitor the Thach Khe commune, strictly handle the case of cutting down protective forests, and at the same time synthesize and report the implementation results to the Provincial People's Committee.
Along with that, localities must review forestry land funds that have not been allocated or leased to develop a management and use plan in accordance with regulations, effectively promoting the potential of forest land.
The police, military and border guards are required to organize patrols, inspections, detect and thoroughly handle violations of the Forestry Law and resist people performing official duties.
Previously, on July 2, Lao Dong Newspaper published an article "Scovering people arbitrarily exploiting coastal protection langurs" reflecting the fact that some households in Thach Khe commune arbitrarily exploited coastal protection langurs that they had planted.
According to the report of the Forest Protection Department, the forest products exploited are casuarina trees with about 135 trees, of which 100 trees have a trunk diameter of 5-20cm and 35 trees have a trunk diameter of 21-30cm. The type of forest exploited is planted forest, with a protective plan to block sand. The management is the People's Committee of Thach Hai commune (now Thach Khe commune).
The above trees were planted, cared for and protected by 2 households since 1990. These are Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh's household (Nam Hai village) and Ms. Tran Thi Luyen's household (Bac Hai village).
Due to historical factors, the coastal forest here, before the protection forest planning, many local people had planted and cared for the non-leopard forest themselves, when the big forests were exploited and sold, they continued to replant new forest trees.
An officer of the Mobile Forest Ranger and Forest Fire Prevention and Fighting Team said that according to regulations, forest owners who want to exploit trees in protective forests must develop a plan and request approval from competent authorities before being exploited.
Also according to regulations, when exploiting white rice in cages, each cage must not exceed 3 hectares. The incident of 2 households in Thach Khe commune arbitrarily exploiting without completing the approval procedures is wrong. However, through actual inspection, each forest they exploited had a small area, only a few hundred m2, not exceeding 3 hectares/grass as prescribed.
