Stoloto and Volunteers of the forest will plant 11 thousand more saplings for restoration of forests in three regions of Russia

Stoloto, the largest distributor of the All-Russian state lotteries, and the All-Russian public movement "Volunteers of the Forest" will plant 11 thousand pine seedlings in three regions of Russia. The purpose of the campaign is to restore forests affected by the bark beetle, the organizers said.

The trees will be planted as part of the "Plant a Tree" environmental campaign, which is taking place for the sixth year in a row. Some of the events have already taken place: on May 16, planting took place in the Nizhny Novgorod region (2 thousand seedlings), on May 23 — in the Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region (6 thousand seedlings). The final stage of the campaign is scheduled for May 30 in the Tosnensky district of the Leningrad region (3,000 seedlings).

The organizers of the campaign explained that the regions where forests are most affected by natural disasters or insect pests are selected for planting. After full restoration, areas of new young forest will accumulate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate the effects of climate change, thus reducing the impact of the greenhouse effect.

Over the years of the campaign, participants have planted a total of 122.7 thousand trees in seven regions of the country. The geography of the project covers Saint Petersburg, Moscow region, Chuvashia, Sverdlovsk, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod and Chelyabinsk regions. The survival rate of planted trees is more than 90% due to the subsequent care of forest service specialists.

"In six years, more than 100,000 seedlings have already turned into small pines, firs, maples and poplars, and in a few more decades there will be a real forest on these sites," said the director of sponsorship and CSR at S8 Capital holding (which includes Stoloto) Oksana Tubman. About 200 Stoloto employees and volunteers take part in the campaign every year. This is one of the company's main and favorite environmental projects, which has become an integral part of our corporate culture, she said.

Since 2014, all lotteries in Russia have been state—owned, organized by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, and they are conducted under the state supervision of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. State lotteries distributed by Stoloto are a significant source of replenishment of budgets at various levels of the Russian Federation in order to finance socially significant facilities and activities, including activities for the development of physical culture and sports, high-performance sports and the sports reserve training system, thus making a proportionate contribution to improving the quality of life of Russians.