World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on Thursday introduced the first in Russia independent rating of the quality of public forest management in the Russian regions, prepared with the assistance of the National Rating Agency.

"The main purpose of this rating is an independent evaluation of the quality of forest management, its objective is attracting the attention of authorities to the issue of forest management in our country," - said the head of the Forest Program of WWF Russia Yelena Kulikova.

The rankings used 38 indicators, divided into six groups: the organization of management, enforcement, maintenance of vitality, economic efficiency, environmental sustainability and public participation in forest management. The rating is based on data for 2010 provided by the authorities in the region. On the amount of points earned for each indicator, the regions were divided into three groups - high, middle and low quality of forest management.

Most of the regions, ranked in the first group rankings are regions of the European part of Russia. In addition, among the leaders are Bashkortostan, Yakutia, Tuva and Udmurtia.

Outsiders are the North Caucasus republics. The group of "below average" also includes Kalmykia, Orenburg and the Kurgan region, Perm region, a number of Far Eastern and Siberian regions: Amur, Novosibirsk, Omsk regions, the Republics of Altai and Buryatia, Primorsky Krai. In addition, among the outsiders is the Novgorod region.

Four regions (Kamchatka, Moscow, Tomsk and Tula region) have not provided the necessary information and were not included in the rating.