Sibanthracite Group enterprises will plant almost 600,000 coniferous tree seedlings in the Novosibirsk and Kemerovo Regions in 2024.

This year, the Kolyvansky and Vostochny Open-Pit Mines will plant 109 hectares of forest with Scots pine seedlings in Novosibirsk Region’s Kuibyshev, Maslyaninsky, and Toguchinsky Districts. These are forests where large-scale tree felling has previously taken place, as well as land affected by fires. Some 13,000 trees have already been planted to date.

Similar planting is being carried out by the Verkhneteshsky Open-Pit Mine in the Chebulinsky District in the north of Kuzbass, where the company has already planted 100,000 trees on an area of 33.1 hectares. By the end of the year, green spaces containing 230,000 seedlings will appear on an area of 75.5 hectares.

According to the Sibanthracite Group’s chief ecologist, Nina Lipatova, the compensatory reforestation, which takes place annually under the vigilant supervision of the Group's specialists, has a positive impact on the environment:

“As a subsurface user, compensatory reforestation is mandatory for Sibanthracite under environmental legislation. The company takes this responsibility seriously and monitors the growth of the trees it plants on Forest Fund lands every year. According to research, more than 80% of the seedlings successfully take root.”

Compensatory reforestation is part of the environmental policy of the regions provided for by the national Ecology project. According to the Forest Code of the Russian Federation, enterprises engaged in industrial activities are obliged to reforest an area equal to the area of forest lands that they have exploited for business purposes. The Sibanthracite Group has planted about 5 million trees in Siberia since 2018.