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BROC Report 10

BROC Report 10

Monitoring activities of the local group Taiga to limit illegal logging operations in the Tayozhnyi wildlife refuge

REGION: Primorsky

DISTRICT: Krasnoarmeiski

DATES OF RIDES: October, 2003

PARTICIPANTS:

Roman Fadeev (BROC)
Fyodor Kronikovski (group Taiga)
Alexander Yaroshevetz (group Taiga)
Vladimir Vegera (State Forest Inspector)
Vladimir Bulash (environmental protection brigade Mandjur)
Rostislav Smelik (municipal militia)

Summary

The local NGO Taiga got some messages from officially working loggers, that there were illegal operations going on in the territory of the Tayozhnyi wildlife refuge. This refuge is well known in the district, particularly amongst hunters and other citizens as one of the last plots of pristine forest, available also for picking mushrooms, berries, nuts and other non-timber forest products. The key factor that has kept this forest intact until now was the absence of roads available for trucking timber around this place. However, during the last year hunters have reported increasing activity of some brigades in the area, recreating roads and bridges, which will soon open free access for them to the intact forests of the wildlife refuge.

Tayozhnyi Refuge Forest, photo ©BROC

Purpose

We hoped to get some clear confirmation regarding possible illegal logging operations and the new road and bridge construction around the refuge. We needed to specify exact points, creeks, trucks and names, and then warn municipal officials and the forest service to help them prevent obvious legal violations and to help them think about better forest management.

Introduction

We had learned before that illegal loggers in this Krasnoarmeiskii District possess in total about 90 units of heavy logging machines and trucks. While the key and biggest logging enterprise of the district, Roschinskii lespromkhoz, having a capacity of more than 100 000 cu meters annually, has only 30 units. And, according to the managers of this enterprise, the only way to block illegal operators on their entrance to the forest is to destroy the entry roads. This was not a new idea for us, since the state forest inspection, being seriously cut by the president's decree in 2000, is obviously not capable of controlling all the sites where those 90 units of equipment are used to work at night. We know that there is always a lack of political and administrative will on the municipal level to sequester those machines from the owners, whose rights are perfectly protected by the Civil Code. Nonetheless, we planned to pressure officials to demonstrate that will and keep roads live, because such practice never brings efficient results - loggers soon fix and use the roads again.

Findings

Riders did not register any illegal logging operations just on the area of the wildlife refuge. But they are very active around it, along the creeks Rogatyi, Kostrikov and Cheremshanka. All their methods are the same everywhere. They select access to the site and valuable trees in the daytime, walking through the forest openly, and then pick up there in the night with a chainsaw to cut and collect all the logs into one pile. Sometimes, they succeed in loading them on the truck and taking off during one night, if the site is not too remote. More often now, particularly for sites like this refuge, loggers leave the pile for another night. Then they come specifically to take the timber off and carry it to the wholesaler. Their key goal is to succeed in doing this with the support of an accompanying car, equipped with a perfect satellite or radio communication, before any inspector fixes their operation.

Recommendations

  • Officials, local activists and hunters should more actively monitor any activities on the refuge, keeping in mind that such protected territory is very important not only for wildlife and recreation, but also as a last sample of the intact forest amongst an industrially destroyed area.
  • Officials and activists should work together trying to help local citizens to recreate and develop an industry of non-timber forest products as an alternative to the logging. They should look more carefully on the expansion of the Chinese in the timber business of this District.