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BROC Report 12
Development of contacts with Ulukitkan NGO in Amur Oblast; analysis of forest use and the timber trade and of the current framework for illegal activity
REGION: Bureisky, Selemdzhinsky
DISTRICT: Amur
DATES OF RIDES: March 13th - 24th 2004
PARTICIPANTS:
Aleksandr Khlus (BROC)Summary
Artur Romanenko (BROC)
Albert Kalashnikov (eco-group Ulukitkan)
Until recently, there have been no voluntary organisations in Amur Oblast carrying out serious monitoring of forest use and the timber trade. At the same time, BROC has received numerous witness reports that the criminal timber market in this area is rapidly developing: valuable remnant tracts of pine are being cut down, gangs of North Korean poachers and Chinese nationals are operating with impunity in the taiga, and Korean cedar is being actively felled. Many reports have been received of bribery and corruption amongst the district militia and the refusal of the district administration to acknowledge the problems of forestry crime. As the leading NGO in the oblast - the Amur division of the Socio-Ecological Union - has nothing to do with this issue, no interest has been shown in the vices of the timber trade by the ecological community until now, with the appearance of the Ulukitkan organisation. According to specialists, restoring the forests in the northern regions of the oblast to commercial standard will take at least 300 years.
Purpose
The aims were to establish strong contacts between the voluntary organisation BROC and Ulukitkan; to familiarise the members of Ulukitkan with the methods for carrying out monitoring at felling sites, roads, depots and customs points and with the methods for collecting and analysing statistical information; and to render any necessary informational, legal and consultative assistance. It was also important to study on site the working methods of logging and intermediary companies, the role played by Chinese capital and the framework for protection of illegal business and its links with government authorities.
Introduction
There are two customs points operating in Amur Oblast, at Blagoveshchensk and Poyarkovo; both ice crossings are officially closed for the duration of the thaw, from the end of March to the middle of April. Many logging operators prefer to accumulate stockpiles of timber in order to transport it by barge during the ice-free months, which is cheaper than having to transport it across the ice. When the ice crossing between Amur and Kheikhe is operational, Russian timber trucks leave for China in order to collect timber at Blagoveshchensk international port; approximately 15-20 vehicles make this journey every day. There is only one independent commercial organisation that carries out any form of ecological audit in the oblast. The director of this organisation is the former head of the Regional Department of Natural Resources (GUPR) and was fired from that position for taking bribes. This organisation carries out ecological inspections and audits logging companies, but ecologists question the reliability of these inspections. The oblast has around 300 registered leaseholders. An agreement was signed in 2003 between the oblast administration and North Korea, whereby North Korean operators were granted a yearly allowance of one million cubic metres of timber. The largest logging operators are to be found along the BAM railway. Illegal logging in the Blagoveshchensk leskhoz primarily consists of felling birch and aspen for fuel wood, including in the Blagoveshchensk nature reserve. There is a high demand on the domestic market for Korean cedar, which is felled illegally in the southern regions. In the Shimanovsky region, pine is protected from felling, but is nonetheless stolen or burned, in order that logging may be carried out subsequently under the guise of sanitary felling.
Organised crime in the timber business was until 2003 under the protection of the local militia. Last year, the head of the Amur division of the Department of Internal Affairs (UVD) was removed from his post. The new head of the Department of Internal Affairs (UVD) has so far been operating a strict policy with regard to the timber business. Illegally felled timber impounded by the Department for the Prevention of Economic Crimes is sequestered and resold through firms working in the interests of police officials.
Before the year 2000, when the Forest Service still existed as part of the Committee on Natural Resources, its director leased large tracts of forest for periods of 49 years to Chechen, Armenian and Chinese nationals. Payment in 1992 (i.e. the bribe for the rental arrangement) was the equivalent of 140 roubles per cubic metre. Two of the largest logging operators in the oblast are Zeisky Timber Firm and the Open Joint-Stock Company Tyndales. Tyndales employs North Koreans, and along the BAM railway line there are settlements inhabited solely by North Koreans, where Russian laws do not apply. Repeated attempts to convince the governor of the oblast of the need to keep the processing of timber within the territory have fallen on deaf ears.
Findings
A meeting was held with an indigenous Evenk inhabitant of the Selemdzhinsky region. According to him, the north of the oblast has always depended on hunting, reindeer-breeding and logging. These days, the hunters are just about managing to eke out a living (premium-grade sable costs 1,200 roubles, fourth-grade with defects costs around 600 roubles), while reindeer breeders are even worse off. Four hundred deer at most remain at the state farm, as compared to 15 years ago, when the herd comprised 5,000. The annual salary at the state farm is 500 roubles. Local hunters are resentful when logging operators turn up on their land without permission, causing the wildlife to move to other regions. For example, to the north of the BAM station Isa, 120km from Fevral'ska on the border with the Khabarovsk region, Chinese nationals at the Limited Liability Company Sever-Invest are felling timber with their own equipment. In the northern regions, Chinese and North Korean nationals are hunting dogs, the endangered musk-deer and other animals - without licences. There are also rumours about the import of heroin from North Korea. There are frequent clashes between Koreans, Chinese and Russian nationals, and even Evenki; shots have even been fired. At the international port of Poyarkovo on the Amur, a small round wood depot has been found with one crane and several timber trucks containing birch trunks. According to local inhabitants, up to 10 timber trucks leave across the ice for China every other day, with both Russian and Chinese licence plates.
The greatest quantity of illegal felling is carried out in the Svobodnensky and Shimanovsky districts, which is largely due to the felling ban on pine in these districts, for which there is an active market in China. The work of the pirate gangs here is similar to their methods of working in the Primorsky region: they bring in prospectors by motorbike, then woodcutters, and this is followed by nocturnal transportation of timber out to the nearest loading point. Also widespread in these regions is the practice of deliberate burning of forest tracts, so that the pine growing in these tracts can be harvested subsequently in the name of sanitary felling. The two largest wholesale depots for the loading of timber by railway operate in Belogorsk; boards advertising "Timber Accepted" are visible all over town.
Observations on the Belogorsk - Novokievsky Uval - Norsk - Fevral'sk route revealed the level of activity of the timber trucks carrying logs (two-thirds larch, the remainder birch) both in the direction of the BAM railway and towards Belogorsk and the Transsiberian railway. Every 15-20km the plots show the fresh tracks of large lorries. We met along this route no fewer than 20 loaded and several empty timber trucks heading into the forest, including one Chinese truck with a Chinese team on board. The local population of the settlement of Norsk are extremely unhappy about the felling activity in the forest in the BAM region. All inhabitants we questioned confirmed that the director of the Norsk leskhoz leases out forest tracts for felling to anyone who is willing to pay. When we met, he explained that it is permitted to lease approximately 1,200,000 cubic metres of the oblast's forest area to foreign nationals (Chinese and Korean) for exploitation. Leaseholders and contractors at the leskhoz deliberately break the felling rules; the most basic and widespread of these infringements is the failure to clean up their plot. Both the director and the public prosecutor confirmed the occurrence of small-scale timber theft and selling-on to Chinese fence dealers in the settlement. The felling and transportation of trunks in the region on the majority of plots takes place between the end of December and the end of March/beginning of April, which is linked to the passability of the roads.
North Korean nationals have been operating in the oblast since the middle of the 1970's for the Joint Open-Stock Company Tyndales on the territory of the Norsk, Tyndinsky and Urushinsky leskhozes, where felling is extremely widespread. According to leskhoz employees, their activity is more carefully managed than that of the Russian and Chinese operators. However, the results of excessive felling are already evident in the hillsides along the BAM railway. On the territory of the Norsk leskhoz, the firms Sever-Invest and A-Viking employ around 100 Chinese logging operators each. Chinese workers tend to get involved in unauthorised felling and also to encourage local inhabitants to steal timber, by buying small quantities up cheaply. Forestry officials and inspectors complain that Chinese loggers avoid speaking Russian during inspections, even though a reasonable command of the language is necessary for their work. Timber dealers place a maximum price on larch and spruce in October and November, when harvesting is impossible due to the impassability of the roads, then when harvesting starts in December and January they drop the price dramatically.
In 2001, all tractors and timber trucks in the oblast were subject to a strict census and licence plates were issued. There are also some Chinese timber trucks bearing Russian licence plates, registered in the region. There is an obvious trend towards the scaling up of operations and the merging of companies, thereby raising their levels of legality. Beyond Turan, where there is no road infrastructure, more than 200,000 hectares of virgin forest remain. However, this year two such 'strengthened' firms from Khabarovsk made claims on this undeveloped territory bordering the Khabarovsk region and are already carrying out surveys of the timber reserves.
It is fairly common amongst leaseholders not to be involved in felling and not even to have the necessary equipment. In such cases, the leaseholder signs an agreement with a firm of contractors, who can be from the Primorsky or Khabarovsk regions, from Ukraine or from China. They harvest the timber according to their own interpretation of the conditions of the agreement, paying the leaseholder 4-5 dollars per cubic meter of larch. There is a high incidence of injury and a lack of appropriate working conditions or social protection amongst these contractors: as most of the woodcutters lack the appropriate technical woodcutting expertise, there have even been some fatalities. There are many damaged trees on the plots, and huge quantities of ground wood are burned directly on site.
In Novobureisk alone, two of the 10 loading sites are Chinese; timber without documents is accepted at these sites for cash at any time, and one of them has a Chinese power-saw bench. Wild gangs steal timber near the roads. During the course of 2003, three criminal cases were initiated by the leskhoz to deal with unauthorised felling, which have now been dragging through the courts for more than a year with no clear result. Chinese operators buy up larch for 300 roubles per cubic metre. The majority of leaseholders and logging operators are new arrivals; there are even Ukrainians working at Talakan. The leskhoz has 37 leaseholders, but only seven of these are actually involved in processing timber, mainly for the domestic Russian market. One leskhoz employee explained off-the-record that they are categorically forbidden from revealing the real statistics relating to forest fires, which means that the official number of burnt areas is at least three times less than in reality. It is forbidden to record a fire as having lasted more than three days, and for the purposes of the official records the fires are divided into numerous smaller fires, which then appear to have been successfully extinguished. This is all because employees and the management of the leskhoz fear dismissal should they admit to an inability to manage the fires. The leskhoz has only two ancient fire engines.
Recommendations
The initiative of the administration of the oblast regarding the registration of all logging equipment merits attention and extension.
Inspections should be carried out regularly by local activists in the northern regions with the support of BROC.