200 thousand legal Christmas trees are planned to be sold by the end of the year

1.07 million coniferous trees were grown by forestry enterprises on special plantations this year. This is half as many as in 2021, when 2.05 million trees were grown. Of them, 52% are pines, 44% are firs, and the remaining 4.5% are other conifer species.

The largest number of trees for sale were grown in the forests of Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions — 20% and 16%, respectively.

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Sales of Christmas trees have halved since the start of the full-scale war. In 2021, 445,000 trees were sold, but in 2022, this dropped to just 206,000. Last year, sales volumes increased by 20%, reaching 247,500 trees.

This year, forestry enterprises plan to sell around 200,000 Christmas trees by the end of the year. As of early December, 44,500 legal Christmas trees have already been sold. At the same time, 402 cases of illegal cutting of Christmas trees were recorded by December 9th this year. This is twice as many as during the entire Christmas season last year. However, the leader in illegal tree cutting was 2021, with 1,932 cases. It is worth noting that this includes both individual trees and mass clearings.

The average purchase price of a Christmas tree is currently 154 UAH, which is 15% higher compared to last year and 1.5 times more than in 2021. The most expensive trees this year were sold in the Zakarpattia region, with an average price of 918 UAH, while the cheapest were in Kharkiv region — 92 UAH. Last year, the most expensive trees were in Kyiv region — 414 UAH, and the cheapest were in Zhytomyr region — 95 UAH.

When buying a Christmas tree, it is important to check the seller’s documents, especially if the tree does not come from forestry enterprises of the State Forest Agency. Every tree should have a label or tag with an individual number and barcode.

These can be verified on the Electronic Timber Accounting System website. If the information for the number is absent in the system, the tree may be illegal.

By purchasing legal Christmas trees, you can protect yourself from buying “forest” trees cut down in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This also helps prevent illegal logging in Ukraine.