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BROC Report 2

BROC Report 2

Public inspection of forest use in Lazo district and support of local activists for biodiversity conservation

REGION: Primorsky

DISTRICT: Lazo

DATES OF RIDES: March 2nd - 3rd, 2003

PARTICIPANTS:

Artur Romanenko (BROC)
Roman Fadeev (BROC)
Serguei Markov (Forest Inspection)
Galina Salkina (Tiger Defence Society (TDS))
Vladimir Kolesnikov (Tiger Defence Society (TDS))

Summary

From the city of Nakhodka, BROC's group went to Lazo district, where Lazovsky Nature Preserve is located. In Lazo we visited a new sawmill next to the head office of the nature preserve. The sawmill is a Russian-Chinese joint venture called Mexa. Reportedly, three weeks before our riders came here, there was a round table on forestry in Lazo District. All municipal stakeholders participated, including militia, administration, and the tax service, at the invitation of the local press-club Blue Mountains. The local forest station and the administration claimed in an article in the municipal paper that there are no problems with logging in the district. But, according to Galina Salkina and the deputy director of the Lazovski preserve, Serguei Hohryakov, the real volume of logging in the district exceeds official limits by 5 times or more. Despite this, tax revenue gained is minimal. The Mexa sawmill accepts up to 10 truckloads of timber each night, and has the capacity to process the entire logging quota of the district in 5 months. The enterprise constantly keeps a timber reserve of about 700 cubic metres, and 14 Chinese managers and workers live and work at the factory. Meanwhile last year Mexa, the biggest enterprise here, registered in Nakhodka, contributed only $2400 to the local budget. For comparison: a film crew from South Korea filming the tiger in the district contributes more than $3300 annually to the local budget. Many timber suppliers that come to Mexa carry their weapons openly. According to Vladimir Novikov, director of the local forest station (leskhoz), Mexa acts as the general subcontractor for the district administration to meet municipal timber needs.

Logging site in Lazo, Photo ©BROC

Purpose

Our target was to identify timber business methods and participants in this district, known as the key nature preserve for the tiger in South Primorye.

Introduction

In total, this district has 14 sawmills, each working 24 hours a day. In addition to the timber company Mexa there are two more companies operating here: the company Fir, with a sawmill in Nakhodka, and the Far East Manufacture, registered in Vladivostok. The key species found in the timber depots is ash, but other endangered ones like the cork tree and Korean pine are registered regularly. According to specialist on wildlife in the Lazovski Preserve, Galina Salkina, active logging has been going on in the area for the past 3 years and all the valuable trees, including Korean pine, have already been harvested. As to the preserve itself, they succeed in banning logging within its boundaries, but poaching and wild ginseng harvesting is a constant problem here. The director of the Lazovski Preserve, Mr. Laptev encourages tourism as a social alternative to destructive logging and poaching and to provide a source of income for the rangers. While the intense tourism in the most attractive sites of the preserve and adjacent areas might challenge the goal of conservation of the area, it is required to provide the funding for the operation of the Preserve.

Timber depot or sawmill, Photo ©BROC

Findings

Director of Lazovski forest station (leskhoz) Vladimir Novikov tells us that he is responsible for confirming all permits to log restricted species from early 2003 with the Primorsky forest service. He also points out that there are only a few registered illegal logging operations exceeding 10-20 cubic metres currently being processed by the militia. There is also a USAID-funded project called Forest for Korean pine Reforestation in the area. According to forest protection engineer K. Kostyuchenko, there are more illegal logging operations in the neighboring Partizanski District, west of Lazo, close to Nakhodka. In Partizanski it is easy to sell a truckload of timber without any documents. Our summary about the general situation with forests in Lazo and surrounding areas was received by BROC by mobile phone and immediately distributed to all regions in the RFE region via our partner, the press agency Data.ru.

Recommendations

  • To analyze possibilities for the Forest project to organize a more appropriate and realistic forest inventory to better check how logging volumes and permits compare with real timber volume, logged and processed here.
  • To help local activists identify tourist capacity of the nature preserve Lazovski and adjacent areas and monitor the scale and impact of tourism in the area.
  • To present the analysis of this monitoring work to the regional forest service.