Forestry

Forestry (лісництво; lisnytstvo). The group of sciences dealing with forests—their nature, their interrelationship with the environment, their cultivation, and their management.

Before the Revolution of 1917 forestry research in central and eastern Ukraine was conducted by such institutions of higher learning as the Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg and the forestry departments of the Moscow Agricultural Academy and the Novo-Aleksandriia Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (moved to Kharkiv in 1915). In Kyiv there was a department of forest management at the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute. Forestry research was also conducted at the VelykoAnadol Forest Project and stations in Darnytsia near Kyiv and elsewhere. Much research in the field was funded by the zemstvos and private individuals. Even before the revolution forestry research and practice in central and eastern Ukraine showed a certain preference for the natural environment of Ukraine, concentrating on such questions as steppe afforestation, forest typology (mainly in the forest-steppe and Podilia), and ameliorative forestation. The principal specialists in the field during this period were Vasilii Dokuchaev and Yurii Vysotsky (both worked in the area of steppe afforestation), Evgenii Alekseev (forest typology), O. Marchenko (forest management and policy), G. Morozov (biology and forest phytosociology), and Vasyl Ohiievsky (forest research).

In the 1920s the All-Ukrainian Forest Administration organized an extensive research program. One of the research stations established by it was the Central Forestry Research Station in the village of Rakytne near Kharkiv (1925–30), which published 15 issues of Pratsi z lisnychoï doslidnoï spravy na Ukraïni (Papers in Forestry Research in Ukraine). Important work was also done by the Agricultural Scientific Committee of Ukraine in Kyiv and other institutions. In this period the scientific-industrial periodicals Lisovod Ukraïny, which was later renamed Ukraïns’kyi lisovod, and, for a time, Lisoderevoobrobnyk were published. Besides those mentioned above, the important research scientists in this period included Yevhen Votchal and V. Shkatelov (forest technology), D. Vorobiov (typology), O. Kolesnykiv (forest management), P. Kozhevnykov, Hryhorii Makhiv (forest ecology), and B. Shustov.

In the 1930s the centers of forestry research in Ukraine were the Kyiv Institute of Forest Management and the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Forest Management and Agroforest Amerlioration in Kharkiv (UNDILH), which is still functioning. At the time much energy was devoted to research on soil-protective forest belts and to compiling tables of the basic forest species (Dmytro Tovstolis and B. Shustov).

Later, in addition to the work of UNDILH, forest research was conducted by the Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and the Stare Selo Biological Station of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Lviv Institute of Forest Technology, the departments of the Faculty of Forest Amelioration at the Kharkiv Agricultural Institute, Dnipropetrovsk University and Kyiv University, and the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of the Economics and Organization of Agriculture. Research in dendrology, acclimatization, and selection has been conducted at various botanical gardens, particularly at the Nikita Botanical Garden near Yalta, the Crimean Game Preserve near Alushta, and at various dendrological parks, such as the Trostianets Dendrological Park in the Chernihiv region, the Sofiivka Park in the Uman region, and Oleksandriia Dendrological Park in Bila Tserkva. Nature preserves are also used partly for research.

In the period after the Second World War the typology of forest species was studied in Soviet Ukraine by D. Lavrynenko, Petro Pohrebniak, A. Florovsky, and S. Tiukov; the selection of tree species by O. Kolesnykiv, Serhii Piatnytsky, and P. Podhursky; seeding and stratification by I. Lototsky; the physical-mechanical properties of trees by I. Yakhontov and A. Zhukov; reforestation and the reconstruction of low-quality seedlings by P. Iziumsky and P. Podhursky; the cultivation of fast-growing species by P. Pohrebniak, A. Soldatov, P. Krotkevych, and M. Turkevych; steppe forestry by L. Ustynovska and B. Lohhinov; forest entomology by Zynovii Holovianko and D. Rudnev; plant pathology by P. Kliushnyk and M. Zerova; the construction and application of mechanical implements in forestry by O. Nedashkivsky and I. Labunsky; accounting in forest management by L. Mushketnyk and S. Tsitsilinsky; and lowering the age of harvestable forests by A. Soldatov and S. Tiukov. A valuable monograph, Lisy Ukraïny (The Forests of Ukraine) by A. Soldatov, S. Tiukov, and M. Turkevych, appeared in 1960.

Almost all scientific and research publications in Soviet Ukraine dealt with the natural and technological problems of forestry. Very few works explored its political or statistical aspects. No dictionary of Ukrainian forestry terminology appeared at that time, although such a dictionary was ready for printing in the 1930s. There was no professional journal of forestry in Soviet Ukraine, and many articles on forestry were published in Visnyk sil's'kohospodars'kykoï nauky or in Ukraïns’kyi botanichnyi zhurnal. Among the non-periodic serials in forestry were the various scientific papers published by UNDILH, the Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the Carpathian Forestry Research Station.

In Western Ukraine forestry did not have an opportunity to develop before 1945. Yet, several Ukrainians have distinguished themselves in this field; for example, Mykhailo Martynets, V. Levytsky, S. Yatsiv, Ye. Filvarkiv, E. Burachynsky, R. Yurkevych, Yu. Napadiievych, I. Martynkiv, O. Kotys, and Andrii Piasetsky.

Outside Ukraine the Ukrainian Husbandary Academy (later the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute [UTHI]) in Poděbrady was also a center of forestry research. Borys Ivanytsky, who developed new concepts of forestry and forest policy in Ukraine from the viewpoint of the Ukrainian national interest, was a leading specialist among Ukrainian foresters. M. Kosiura, professor of forestry at the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy, was another important specialist abroad. After the Second World War, besides those just mentioned, the following scientists emigrated from Ukraine: Hryhorii Makhiv (soil specialist), O. Paramoniv (forest protection), Bohdan Luchakovsky (forest policy), and M. Chapovsky (forest soils).

In іndependent Ukraine, a two-volume Ukrainian encyclopedia of forestry, edited by Stepan Hensiruk, appeared in Lviv in 1999–2000.

Bohdan Luchakovsky

[This article was updated in 1999.]