Project update - January 2006

"Bars" team - the "watchcat" in the forests of Primorye

(by Nadezhda Sutulova of Phoenix, based on the interview with Oleg Grushenko, the team's leader).

New Year's Eve. Our team is standing with a checkpoint on the forest road, leading from the Shkotovskoye Plateau, a place where firs and ash-trees are most accessible for illegal loggers. The post resembles in a way a block-post in Chechnya, where the joint special police force troop is doing its military service: the roaring of motors, cars with their headlights on, running people, officers in masks with guns… Out of 23 checked cars, 3 are loaded with illegal wood. Besides felling of 30 conifers, one of the violators stole 30 firs form the territory of Shkotovsky forestry unit warehouse. The poacher is going to get a 4-year jail sentence. A driver reports that within 13 feet from the checkpoint he noticed several abandoned fir trees lumped on the curbside of the road. Apparently, the illegal loggers found out about the checkpoint by the engines' din, and got rid of illegal wood. The 14 firs were collected and brought to Shkotovsky forestry unit…

Since its creation in 2005, the "Bars" (Panther) team, consisting of 10 mobile forest managers of Primorsky Department of the Federal Nature Use Service, has conducted 7 full-scale interdepartmental patrols with 100 days in the field. Close collaboration with security, law enforcement, special police force and road police officers allowed for creation of a permanent team that is ready to arrive in any district of Primorye within three days.

Over this period the team revealed 13 large-scale illegal logging cases (not even counting several dozens of minor ones) with the total volume of 2,000 cubic meters of such valuable timber species as oak, ash, cedar and walnut. The officers stated two cases of poaching, confiscated over 20 hunting rifles, checked 18 logging enterprises and 6 forestry units.11 criminal cases were initiated and the violators were obliged to pay compensations totaling more than £820,000.

The peak of violations falls on cold season, from October to March: during these months the demand for timber increases because roads and swamps get frozen, making logging procedures simpler. Oak and cedar, which represent the food base of ungulates, have the greatest popularity among illegal loggers. Massive fells of these species result in lack of food for ungulates in wintertime, and as a consequence in shortage of prey for predators, as ungulates in their turn make up the predator's food base. Breaking one segment of the food chain, we ultimately destroy the chain on the whole. And it takes on average 50 years for cedar and 30 years for oak before they start fructifying. The confiscated timber is brought to the State Forestry Fund, and it is the state that sells the wood, this time legally. But for taiga and its inhabitants it is not relevant whether the forest is sold legally or not, it will not help them to survive.

Frequently the poachers' activities are appallingly cruel and cynic. During one of the patrols on the New Year's Eve, the team detained a group of illegal loggers who were felling fir trees that many Russians consider an essential part of celebration. The poachers were felling trees of 20-30 feet high and 1-1,5 feet in the diameter just to take the 7 -feet tops. Usually, the violators take the best wood, leaving aside young trees and underwood, which are later crushed under the tracks of logging tractors. Unfortunately, it is very often that the rangers have to repeatedly detain the same violators

Thus at present, law-enforcement and controlling agencies fail to put an end to forest poaching. The actual legislation does not presuppose bringing violators to criminal responsibility in the form of real imprisonment (poachers usually get off only with a probation jail sentences up to 3 years). The confiscated logging equipment is later given back to poachers, because the Russian Federation Criminal Code does not state confiscation among the forms of penalty.

A state ranger is placed in such limits when he can prove a fact of illegal logging only when he catches a violator red-handed, i.e. at the moment of felling itself. Another problem is related to the number of state forest managers. In Primorsky region, where the forest fund makes up 12 million hectares, only 10 rangers work in the field (it equals to 1 person for 1,25 million hectares).

Nevertheless, regardless of all the shortcomings of Russian environmental regulations, the forest team manages to obtain good results. On the New Year's Eve of 2005/06 in the framework of young conifers protection operation, the rangers of Primorsky Department of the Federal Nature Use Service took one of the first places having revealed 3 cases of illegal felling and initiated 4 criminal procedures. And this was only in Shkotovsky district, where an estimated 15 thousand of fir trees are logged annually, as informal data state.

The great results are to a large extent achieved thanks to the DSWF' s constant support that makes the team's work more effective and reminds us that the battle against poaching is not lost, and the Amur tiger's future is not hopeless, as its habitat is being protected.

Pipeline Update

On January 30, 2006 "Rostechnadzor" (Russian Federal service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision) reported an official decision stating that the 14-member expert committee concluded with the majority of 11 votes that building the terminal at Perevoznaya on the Amur Bay near Vladivostok was unacceptable. The decision gives new hopes for the critically endangered Amur leopard and the unique forest and marine ecosystems of Southwest Primorye.

Unfortunately, the federal expert committee has not endorsed the results that reviewed the pipeline project on the Baikal Lake, and though the EIA's conclusion was negative, the threat to this World Heritage Site is not over yet, with one stretch of the pipeline proposed to run just 800 meters away from the shoreline!

Tiger's statistics

Last year's tiger census (2005) revealed that tiger numbers have crept back to between 431 - 529, but official data also reveals that in 2005 in the habitats in Primorsky and Khabarovsky regions 47 conflict tiger cases were investigated and successfully resolved, 12 conflict tiger cases were taken into account, six dead tigers have been discovered and a tiger cub rescued.

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