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BROC Report 11

BROC Report 11

Supporting monitoring activities of the local NGOs Taiga Ranger and Nadezhda on the status and dynamics of activity of the core logging and timber export companies on the lower Amur river

REGION: Khabarovskii

DISTRICT: Ulchskii

DATES OF RIDES: October 26th - November 10th 2003

PARTICIPANTS:

Artur Romanenko (BROC)
Alexander Khluss (BROC)
Lydia Titova (local NGO Nadezhda, De Kastri)
Oksana Daschinskaya (NGO Taiga Ranger)
Komsomolsk-on-Amur
Victor Onenko (Indigenous Peoples Association, Ulchskii District)

Summary

BROC received some alarming information from our partners of the Taiga Ranger about the situation in forestry and timber trade in Ulchskii District of Khabarovskii Krai, located on the seashore of Tartar Strait, lower Amur river. This remote area, separated from the main infrastructure of the Khabarovskii industrialized zone by the roadless forests, was always one of the most anarchic with regards to the use of rich resources of fish and forests. On the other hand, the under-resourced District authority could not also resist the environmentally and socially destructive activities of the key timber companies, such as De Kastri-Les, De Kastri Trade Co. and more recently the Malaysian concession-holder, Rimbunan Hijau, operating south from De Kastri around the Siziman Bay. More than 300 000 cu meters of timber are exported annually to China and South Korea from the De Kastri timber terminal. The De Kastri timber terminal's weak state customs and border control indicates the need to also have sustainable civil control be provided by the local activists.

Purpose

Our goals were, first of all, to collect realistic data about the situation in the local timber business and export and then to help local activists methodologically and organizationally to provide efficient junction with the state agencies, responsible for the forestry and trade control.

Introduction

On the way to De Kastri, which lies via Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk, the riding group met with Elena Svischeva, a chief specialist on forest inspection in the Russian Far East Department of the State Environmental Control, the person responsible to any public appeals on forestry violations. With regards to preliminary information on De Kastri and concerned companies, she said that there was no worrying information about that area to deal with and no reason to provide any inspection there. On the other hand, riders learned there in the Department, that there is quite a new threat to the forests around De Kastri, coming from the oil terminal and pipeline of Exxon, being created here to ship Sakhalin oil overseas. Specific information was received in regards to the new road construction on the border of Sovgavanskii District of Khabarovskii Krai and Terneiskii of Primorye. There, the logging company Terneiles leased about 650 000 hectares of the intact forest of indigenous peoples on the Samarga watershed. Riders learned that this road already has confirmation from the authorized Department of Nature Resources in Khabarovsk, but still has no land rights for any project. That means that no one can start construction. This was a challenge for the riders to go to Sovgavan and learn about the situation with local awareness on the issue.

Specific information was received in Komsomolsk with regards to the very active illegal logging operations in the territory reserved for creation of the Anyuiskii national park on the biggest right tributary of the lower Amur river, whose timber is going mainly to Khabarovsk to be shipped to China.

Findings

Along the road to De Kastri, riders registered and filmed timber tracks and sawmills in the towns of Nizhnetambovskoye and Yagodnoye, as well as timber depots with piles of low quality timber prepared for shipping down the Amur River and then on to Japan or China. The huge timber depot, containing giant piles of logs belonging to the Shelekhovskii company, is supplied with a set of Japanese tracks, logging, loading and processing equipment. In De-Kastri there are some brigades of illegal loggers which used to destroy equipment of De Kastri-Les, competing for the better forest leases. Together with foresters, they also used to burn forest plots to get them afterwards for free as so called sanitary (salvage) logging. Remarkable, that on the road to Siziman Bay, where the Malaysian (formerly belonged to US-Russian joint venture Forest Starma) concession is located, there is a road barrier with a check point, targeted to isolate all the logging and timber shipping operations from any public, and even state control. All the roads there are crossing huge areas of clearcuts, burnt forest remainders and logging trails. On the junction of the Khabarovsk-Komsomolsk and Lidoga-Vanino roads riders visited a checking point for timber going from the Amur area to Vanino-Japan or going south-west to Khabarovsk China. The riders counted timber tracks.

Recommendations

  • Officials of Khabarovski krai and NGO Taiga Ranger should pay more attention to the situation on remote coastal areas and actively collaborate with local activists, focusing on the operations of the foreign concession and on reserved territories.
  • State checking point in Lidoga needs more systematic participation of public activists and media attention.
  • BROC needs to concentrate more special funding to spend more time in such remote points to develop local public initiatives and monitor forest use and the timber trade.
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