The employees of the environmental supervision department of the Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture of Georgia busted two illegal sawmills. The development came as part of the fight against illegal forest use, which led to establishing two illegal sawmills in the Adjara and Imereti regions.
The department employees have also sealed the unregistered band saw machine in the Shuban village of Shuakhevi municipality. It is worth noting that the citizen illegally obtained 18 units of untreated coniferous logs in the surrounding area.
Similarly  in Rtskhilati village of Chiaturi municipality a citizen illegally set up a circular sawmill on the territory of his homestead. At the same time  2 units of untreated round timber (logs) of coniferous species were removed from the area. Since both facts contain signs of a criminal offense, the materials were sent to the relevant agencies for further response.
It is to be added that the Department of Environmental Supervision crews carry out continuous 24-hour patrolling throughout the country to prevent, detect, and suppress the facts of illegal forest use, hunting, fishing, and other environmental violations in a timely manner. In addition immediate response is given to each message received on the hotline (153) of the Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture.
The Ministry of Environment Protection’s representative during the media briefing said that this is not the first time rather many such drives have been launched against illegal saws. They also revealed that this drive against the anti-social elements who are destroying the natural resources will continue in the future as well.
The illegal saws operating throughout many regions without proper government sanction pose a major threat to agencies responsible for preventing this criminal act. The large-scale destruction of forest products causes many problems.
It threaten biodiversity as tree cover is required for proper biodiversity balance. Removing trees further increases the speed of soil erosion. The Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture used to hold educational seminars and workshops to educate the public on the importance of forest cover.
