Russian Forestry and Siberian pine.
by Angus, 20 August, 2017, 1 comments
Siberia is a huge geographical expanse and contains about a fifth of the world’s wood reserves. On a recent trip through Russia and Siberia, I saw first-hand what an enormous resource forestry is for Russia, representing almost half its land area. Most of it is naturally occurring forest, or Taiga, which hasn’t been planted and regenerates quite well after harvesting.
The large cities in Siberia represent the heart of the Russian forestry business - cities like Arkangel, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Ust-Ilim, though the sheer size of the region makes transport and logistics difficult; Russia is the biggest country in the world by land area and has numerous adjoining neighbours. One of the main arteries for extracting timber is the trans-Siberian railway which takes timber to Europe and the east (China buys 20% of Russia’s output). Read more...