#6588
#11 - JRL 6587
The Guardian (UK)
December 4, 2002
The timber trap
Siberia's people and wildlife face disaster from illegal logging
By Paul Brown
The Udege forest hunters stood at the border of their traditional territories and threatened to shoot the road workers if they crossed the line that represents the last frontier of the pristine forest protecting the game on which the Udege depend. To the outside world, a defeat for the Udege will see the dashing of hopes for the survival in the wild of the Siberian tiger - but for the Udege it is also their survival as a separate people.
The building of the 650-mile road has stopped. It was started at each end - on the coast and deep in the interior of eastern Siberia - with a plan to meet in the middle, in order to bring out the logs from the last untouched forests in the region. The 20 miles needed to join the two ends of this vast project run through tiger country at the head waters of the Bikin river. This is the most bio-diverse virgin forest in Russia with 380-year-old cedar trees and giant blue subtropical butterflies.
It was here that the road builders met the hunters and stopped work. The whole dispute has gone to the district court. Twice the hunters have lost the battle to stop the road, but as work was about to begin again the issue was referred back to the court a third time. The villagers discovered just in time that the developers had not done an environmental impact assessment of the road, something required under Russian law. The road could yet be declared illegal.
The fate of the Udege and the tiger is a modern parable of the disaster that is overtaking the natural world. Short-term desire for profit from local timber merchants, selling logs to feed the appetite for expensive hardwood furniture from the developed world, leads to the destruction of the tiger's last habitat. At the same time, environment groups, such as WWF, collect money from the same consumers for the save the tiger project.
The hunters have lived for thousands of years on the Bikin river in a village called Krasnyy Yar. The traditional Udege hunters today include Russians and another native people called Nanai.
They belong to a cooperative which has a quota for sable, red squirrel, mink, elk, moose, wild boar, bears, badgers and otters. The main income is the money for the skins the hunters sell at the St Petersburg fur market, but prices have dropped. Sables, once the most valuable, fetch only £50 a pelt, but otters twice as much. The meat of the game, including the bears, they eat, along with the vegetables that grow in the village.
Hunting is supposed to be strictly controlled with only 800 sables to be killed a year, between 50 hunters. Only 10 to 15 otters can be killed and 20 to 25 bears depending on calculations of what the animal population is in the 1.3m-acre reserve. Both for the hunters, and the 35 Siberian tigers that live alongside them in the same patch of forest, game numbers are vital for survival. Without deer, wild boar and elk, the tiger could not survive, nor could the hunters eat.
Cutting the trees is illegal, according to Russian law, but in this corrupt society every woodcutter has a licence when challenged. Some genuine licences are issued by the local authority.
The problem is that the forest is being nibbled at from all sides. Illegal logging is rife. The halted road in the north of the territory is just part of the problem. The company that owns it, Porzcharski, has contracts to supply the Japanese and is hungry for the ancient cedar trees.
In the south, a second large company, Terneyles, runs a sawmill and has already taken down 10% of the forest which is supposed to be kept exclusively for game and hunting. Other smaller companies, some of which only exist for a few days, cut a lorry-load of trees and then disappear - making them impossible to prosecute. Rewards are high; cedar is worth £12 a cubic metre, so one tree can demand £300.
Rodion Sulyandriga, a university-educated Udege, says: "This is our territory by federal law; we should have the right to veto timber cutting, but this is ignored. Our traditional way is to fish, hunt and gather nuts and berries and coexist with the tigers. We gather ginseng and other medicinal plants and sell them to the Chinese, and the pelts go to the fur market. If the cutting goes on, our way of life, our people, the game and the tiger will disappear."
Already the river, once renowned for its fishing and home of the rare leatherback turtle, is muddy. Vladimir Shirko, the general director of aboriginal hunting said: "When I was a boy I could catch enough fish for a family meal in five minutes, now it could take hours. We even buy sea fish to supplement the local supplies.
"The game is confined to an ever smaller area. Where the forest has been clear-felled there is no game at all. The only hope for us and, I suppose, the tigers, is to stop the logging. If there are no elk or boar, there are no tigers. They will have to go elsewhere to eat, but where can they go?"
Contacts with senior executives of the Porzcharski company about the road and the company's logging intentions failed to gain a reply. One was promised but not forthcoming.
Eduard Grabovsky, chairman of the board of directors of the Terneyles company says it had permission to cut 130,000 cubic metres of wood, but had limited itself to 70,000 because of its understanding of the value of the Bikin reserve.
He said the Udege people, environment groups, the United Nations environment programme and the timber companies should get together. "We need programmes on Udege culture and health, and should provide special conditions for the Udege way of life. But this should take into account youth's desire to study and get education. Also, we need a comprehensive programme on nature use. This means we should develop forest resources, including cutting old trees and developing tourism."
WWF, which runs an international campaign to save the tiger, concedes it is losing ground to the loggers. Igor Chestin, the director of WWF Russia, said: "We are trying to get a sustainable forestry agreement with Terneyles, but it is nowhere near yet and may take another four or five years. The rest of the companies, some of which only last a day, are not even talking to us. I have hope for the tiger, but it is a hard struggle."
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