120 



SIBERIA. 



Witli a viuw tu Uiu proper administiatiuii of tlio forests of Wosluni Siberia siuco Iho 

 year 1884 it lias been placed upon tlie same footing as that by which the Crown forests of 

 European Russia an- rnana^.-d, ;i paid forest guard being introduced. The peasants are required 

 to look after the funist piaeed at their disposal. In the course of its eight years existence, 

 the Administration has eJTocted not a little for the organization of the Crown forests of 

 Western Sibeiia. 'I'ln' tiinldT estat(!S have been <iscerlaiiii'd and described, every year only 

 that pait is api)oinleil to be cut which is permissible according to the conditions of each 

 estate; the dues have been regulated, control over the raftage of the timber has been 

 established, as well as over the conveyance of it to the stea:ner wharves and the works 

 anil inanufactories. By means of such measures, without any i)urdening of the local ru- 

 ral population, which as before enjoys the timber for its own domestic uses free, 

 it has been found possible to bring the revenue of the Crown from its property 

 in Western Siberia to 500,000 roubles a year. This figure, considerable for tin; present 

 time with the existing very low prices for wood, cannot give even an approximate idea of 

 that enormous revenue which the forest resources of Siberia promise in the near future, when 

 the railway now being earned through the country increases the consumption of wood from 

 the northern timber zone, and when in the south a regular sale of the same is organized to 

 the conterminous and absolutely treeless regions of the Chinese Empire. 



In Eastern Siberia all the inhabitants are allowed, as before, free use of the State 

 foiests for all their needs, and all forest control is entirely absent. To the present time only 

 one forest estate has been declared exclusively belonging to the Crown, and this only in 

 consequeuce of a petition of the Irkutsk Hunting Company, who took upon itself the pres- 

 ervation of this estate. The law, although it requires that payment for the benefit of the 

 Crown should be exacted for all wood received from the free Government forests by the 

 various works, and this payment be determined by tlie quantity of wood consumed by the 

 works, yet as the superintendence of this is imposed upon the Crown courts and the local 

 authorities (Art. 415 Forest Code, ed. 1876) the amount of revenue obtained is extremely 

 insignificant. According to the returns furnished by the Irkutsk and Yeniseisk Crown 

 Courts, the revenue received from the sale of timber and the fines for the breach of the 

 forest code were as in the following table. 



1 



At the present time in consequence of the Increase of the population and of the activity 

 of the works, and also of the contemplated building of the Siberian Railway and the settlement 

 and industrial development of the adjacent localities expected to ensue therefrom, the adoption 

 of measures for the protection of the most important forests of Eastern Siberia is recognized 



