12/29/00 -- Greens see greed, neglect tainting Siberia's pearl

Greens see greed, neglect tainting Siberia's pearl

LISTVYANKA, Russia (Reuters) - Shimmering between the Siberian taiga and the Mongolian border, Lake Baikal is the crescent-shaped jewel in Russia's rusting ecological crown.

The world's deepest, oldest major lake is home to hundreds of animal and plant species found nowhere else, but activists say a hunt for the more marketable assets of natural gas and fur is threatening to cloud its turquoise waters.

Conservation group Greenpeace also says Russia's failure to cut pollution in the 365 rivers flowing into Baikal is a symptom of state neglect presided over by President Vladimir Putin.

Last spring he ordered the Ministry of Natural Resources to absorb the once-independent Environmental Protection Commission. Without its protection, Greenpeace fears a devastating effect on Baikal's mile-deep waters and 1,500 animal species. It asked UNESCO last month to transfer the 25-million-year-old lake to its list of endangered World Heritage sites.

Some 80 percent of Baikal's fauna is unique to the lake, making it particularly sensitive to changes in water quality, said Roman Pukalov, Greenpeace's Baikal Campaign coordinator.

But Valentin Brovchak, deputy head of Russia's Department for Environmental Analysis, said decisions were being taken on how to clean up Baikal's tributaries and disagreed with Greenpeace that the lake's ecosystem was in danger. ``I've worked on Baikal since 1992 ... and while there has not been any sharp improvement in its situation it has not got worse either. It's been stable for at least eight years,'' Brovchak said.

GAS, FUR-HUNTING FEARS

Pukalov said uncontrolled hunting was biting deep into one of Baikal's most famous natural attractions. ``The population of nerpa seal in the lake has fallen over the last six years by 30 percent at least. Hunters are allowed 6,000 a year, but illegal hunting claims twice that many.''

He said amateur hunters injured three seals for every one they killed with nets and guns, trying to satisfy a growing demand for skins in northern China and Mongolia. He said he also feared the impact on Baikal of test drilling for gas in the delta of the Selenga river and mineral exploration close to the lake, which holds a fifth of the world's flowing fresh water.

``These are some of the biggest problems for Baikal and should not be allowed on World Heritage Sites. This is why we want UNESCO to put pressure on the government,'' Pukalov said.

Brovchak said he had not heard of mineral exploration near Baikal and a resolution he expected to go before parliament early next year should outlaw oil and gas exploration there.

``It says in the resolution that exploitation of new deposits is to be banned in the central ecological zone around Baikal. ... Already the reserve is probably one of the most strictly protected regions in the world,'' he said. ``You can hardly even pick mushrooms there.''

Baikal survived decades of Soviet industrialization relatively unscathed while Russia put its natural resources to work in breakneck economic pursuit of the West, sparing little thought for the environmental damage being wreaked.

The late-1980s ``perestroika'' policies of Mikhail Gorbachev lifted ecological issues off the bottom of the Kremlin priority list, but activists say Putin is reversing the process.

He enraged environmentalists in May when he decreed that the Ministry for Natural Resources absorb the State Environmental Protection Committee and the Forestry Commission. The government said it was to cut costs but groups like Greenpeace and Baikal Environmental Wave said it cleared the way for unchecked exploitation of Russia's overworked environment.

``I think Putin made a very grave error. With one hand (the ministry) is now exploiting natural resources while it is supposed to be protecting them with the other,'' BEW's Jennie Sutton told Reuters. ``If the decree was to cut down on bureaucrats, then it would be a good thing, but it also means enterprises like gas exploration are not going to be monitored and held within some degree of state control.''

Greenpeace said it collected more than the 2 million signatures needed to force a state referendum on the restoration of independent environmental and forestry agencies and a ban on imports of nuclear waste to Russia.

But election authorities threw out half a million of the signatures as illegitimate in November, prompting another furious response from environmentalists and Greenpeace is threatening action in Russia's Supreme Court.

Brovchak denied any government wrongdoing over the referendum and said the merged ministry was working well.

``It's a lot easier now. If before certain structures involved departments in different ministries, it was very complicated to make ecological decisions which related to all of them,'' he said.

``There are still problems but it is still taking shape. I have not seen conflicts of interest or contradictions yet and if there are we will sort them out,'' he added.

Russia's economic problems have often forced the government to push environmental concerns into the shadows, but Brovchak said Baikal was just as precious to politicians as it was to the rest of Russia.

``It is only Baikal that has a specially decreed status, not the Caspian sea or the River Volga. There's so much there: the mythology, history, not to mention the economic significance of tourism and natural beauty. Baikal is unique. It is a unique phenomenon for the whole world.''

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