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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Illegal Logging Biz Grows in Russia

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

07/06/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Here is more on the serious problem of illegal logging in Russia.

These are huge forests. If they are lost it will have global

implications.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Illegal Logging Biz Grows in Russia

Source: Copyright 2000, Associated Press.

Date: July 5, 2000

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) - In the tall, dense forests of Russia's Far

East, small firms and family-run businesses turn out one of the

region's biggest exports: thick logs of oak, ash, spruce and pine.

They pile them onto the beds of secondhand Japanese trucks, and send

them to the ports of Nakhodka and Vladivostok. From there, the wood is

shipped to Japan, China and South Korea - some of the world's largest

timber importers, which happen to be right in Russia's backyard.

In a region of high unemployment, the timber businesses provide a

surefire way to make a living. But they're illegal, and they're

thinning forests, damaging watersheds and could cause the extinction

of some species - including the Korean pine, environmental activists

say.

``There is an impression that forest management is controlled not by

state agencies, but by criminal lords,'' the environmental group

Greenpeace said in a statement.

Greenpeace drew attention to illegal logging this week when six of its

members chained themselves to a pile of timber being shipped from

Russia to Japan. The activists left the Russian freighter Wednesday,

saying they had succeeded in their goal of pressing the Group of Eight

industrial nations to move against illegal wood imports. The G-8 holds

a summit in Japan this month.

Russia is one of the world's largest timber producers, felling more

than 3.5 billion cubic feet every year.

The government puts some limits on logging to protect the environment,

but they are widely flouted. Poachers cut down about 776.9 million

cubic feet each year - or one-fifth the official harvest, Greenpeace

said in a study last year.

Poached timber is easy to export, thanks to a lax 1999 export license

law.

Besides, timber exports bring money to state coffers in the form of

customs duties.

For Russia, ``to start fighting illegal timbering means to lose the

export duties and the budget revenue,'' said Vladimir Chuprov, another

Greenpeace activist.

The deputy head of Russia's Federal Forestry Service, Dmitry Odintsov,

blamed the rise in illegal logging on the recent reorganization of the

forest service and local officials ignoring timber laws. Some regions

have timber procurement offices ``controlled by organized criminal

groups engaged in illegal timber exports,'' the ITAR-Tass news agency

quoted him saying Wednesday.

Most poachers are villagers who lost their jobs when the state-run

timber companies shut down, said Anatoly Kabanets, an official with

the Natural Resources Ministry. Eighty to 100 percent of adults in the

villages in logging areas are unemployed and often earn their living

by destroying the nearby woodland, he said.

``They all do that,'' Kabanets said. ``Everyone has the equipment

in their backyard.''

The Far East region of Primorye alone accounts for half of all the

valuable species of trees illicitly felled in Russia, Greenpeace

surveys show. Of 21.18 million cubic feet of valuable wood that was

harvested illegally across the country last year, poachers here logged

10.6 million cubic feet, worth $24 million, Greenpeace said.

Greenpeace found that the businesses in the Far East hardly hide their

illicit operations.

``In the west of Russia, one has to make efforts to find illegal sites

because they are disguised. Here, everything is open and shameless,''

said Alexei Morozov, a Greenpeace member who led surveys in the Far

East earlier this year.

During one two-week survey in June, his team ran across workers

cutting down trees in seven illegal logging sites.

``They log in broad daylight because no one really hunts for them,''

Morozov said.

The poachers fiercely defend their businesses. Last year, a bomb

destroyed the house of a timber company director who runs tracts 187

miles northeast of Vladivostok. The director, police said, had tightly

controlled his company's logging sites to prevent poaching. No one was

hurt in the blast.

Environmentalists have also had run-ins with illegal loggers. In one

such confrontation last year, a Greenpeace activist was marking

illegally felled wood when he came face-to-face with a poacher and his

bodyguards.

After a short, menacing talk, the bodyguards escorted the activist out

of the area in a three-car convoy.

``One car trailed behind and one went ahead,'' Morozov said. ``And the

third at times went by the side or toward us, turning away before

colliding.''

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