Senate Deputy Olga Bulavkina has commented on the multi-million fines for picking red-listed tulips.
According to ORDA, Bulavkina believes that environmental legislation needs to strike a balance between protecting nature and a reasonable differentiation of responsibility depending on the offender's intent.
"On the one hand, measures need to be tightened — we remember how people used to cut trees for brooms and pick flowers in armfuls. That was deliberate destruction of nature," the Deputy noted.
However, according to her, not all violations are intentional.
"Most Kazakh citizens are aware of the responsibility. But the list of rare plants includes more than 300 species. It's impossible to learn them all. A person is walking, sees a beautiful flower, and picks it. What should be done in such a situation?" Olga Bulavkina questioned.
The Deputy proposed revising the approach to such cases. In her opinion, strict measures should be retained for the malicious destruction of rare species, while for unintentional actions, a warning should suffice.
To recall, in April last year, in the Ordabasy district of the Turkestan region, a 22-year-old female student recorded a video of red-listed tulips she had picked. The police later identified the girl. The authorities did not report how this story ended.
In April this year, a video from the Ordabasy district of the Turkestan region spread online, showing a local woman collecting a bouquet of red-listed tulips in a field. It was reported that the woman faced a fine of 3,000 MCI (11,796,000 tenge) or corrective or community service.
Later, it became known that an inspection was initiated in the Aktobe region following the publication of a photo of the akim (rural head) of the Kudaibergen Zhubanov rural district in the Mugalzhar region, Lyazzat Berdibayeva, holding steppe tulips. The image provoked a negative reaction from social media users, who questioned the legality of picking the flowers and called for action.