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BROC Report 9

BROC Report 9

Continued monitoring activities by the local group Taiga on reserved sites of Udege Legend national park

REGION: Primorsky

DISTRICT: Krasnoarmeiski

DATES OF RIDES: September 25th - 29th, 2003

PARTICIPANTS:

Artur Romanenko (BROC)
Fyodor Kronikovski (group Taiga)
Alexander Yaroshevetz (group Taiga)
Vladimir Bulash (environmental protection brigade Mandjur)
Eduard Molchanov (forest officer, WWF-RFE)
Igor Kushpeta (Roschinskii logging company)

Summary

Despite all the administrative measures and our media campaign against it after our previous rides, legally authorized company Roschinskii continued to compete with illegal brigades in logging on the reserved territory of the designated national park Udege Legend. After former rides, the group originally suspected that logging is being conducted there on too steep, restricted slopes. To confirm or reject this report, environmentalists involved a manager from the logging company and a specialist from WWF.

Log trail in Udege Legend, photo ©BROC

Purpose

We planned to get officially valid and documented confirmation of the violations, occurring in the operations of the legally working brigade and on the other hand to help them to identify illegal loggers, stealing the same timber here during night time.

Introduction

As we learned in the summer ride, there is a series of logging sites for restricted Korean pine and valuable hardwood, located on the steep slopes. Also, Fyodor Kronikovsky from NGO Taiga got many reports from the local citizens, who have watched illegal operations on the western border of the national park, formerly considered as quite remote and inaccessible. To identify most of the violations properly, a specialist from WWF-RFE was included into the riding team together with a local militia officer. Riders decided to enter designated park territory from the east-west timber road Roschino-Plastun, as timber thieves do, and check all the footprints of illegal brigades.

Findings

Riders discovered plenty of logging trails on the west border of the park, along the creeks Vetvisty, Prosechnyi, Frolov and Kondratov. Loggers here mainly steal oak and ash more than 40 cm diameter and Korean pine more than 50 cm. Looking for the biggest and healthiest trees, they enter restricted water protection zones and destroy them by the kilometre. Taking only the highest quality, they leave 70% of each tree to rot in the forest. By the shape of the site, operations are conducted here all round the year, and thousands of cubic metres of the wealthiest trees have already been taken from the park area.

Recommendations

  • Municipal officials, state inspectors and local activists should more actively look for dialogue with legal loggers, targeted to provide more efficient control over the park's borders.
  • Local activists should more actively monitor the process of creating new logging trails out of the main timber roads and inform militia and forest inspectors to stop illegal operations.
  • Officials and activists should work together trying to estimate added value coming to the budget from processed wood and equally reduce allowable cut volume in the intact forests.