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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Thieves Plunder 'Protected' Forests in Russia

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

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

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

11/04/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Environmental bandits are plundering the Earth's mission critical

environmental systems, including the World's last large forest

wildernesses, as society and government's turn their blind eye.

Russia's huge forests in the Far East are an example. Any chance of

success in avoiding threatened global ecosystem collapse depends upon

a credible and massive policy response being launched at the earliest

possible moment. Ending deforestation, preserving old-growth

forests, conserving all forests, maintaining climatic systems and

commencing the age of ecological restoration are global imperatives.

g.b.

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Title: Thieves plunder 'protected' forests in Russia

Source: (c) 2000 Cable News Network

Date: November 3, 2000

Byline: Gary Strieker, CNN Environmental Correspondent

KHABAROVSK, Russia (CNN) -- Outlaws are plundering protected forests,

cutting timber without licenses and targeting endangered tree species

in the Far East of Russia.

Federal authorities are unable, or unwilling, to stop it. But some

Russians bear public witness to what's happening to their forests.

One is Anatoly Lebedev, an environmental activist with his own TV

show on a local network. He believes organized crime and corruption

are behind the alarming increase in illegal logging.

Authorities here have confiscated a truckload of a rare pine prized

for furniture making, cut illegally from a protected reserve. But

it's unlikely the lawbreakers will be punished, according to Lebedev.

"It means that just the people concerned with this timber, including

officials and illegal loggers, will share the money which comes from

the selling of the timber," he said.

There is little control and much corruption. Even Chinese logging

crews have been able to cross the border to steal timber from

Russia's forests.

Conservationists say this is like other crime waves in Russia,

resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"What has happened since the decline of the Soviet Union is the

absence of state control and the breakup of large timber enterprises

that were under state ownership," said Lebedev, an activist with the

Bureau for Regional Public Campaigns.

Bankrupt state logging enterprises, including their processing mills,

are now history, replaced by hundreds of small operators focused on

exporting raw timber to hungry markets in Asia.

Some legal lumber mills in the region are providing new jobs and

supporting the local economy China or South Korea.

There is a new processing mill in the region, one of few, that

provides jobs and tax revenues without exporting raw timber.

Lebedev says expanding such timber processing operations is one way

to curb illegal logging.

"We hope that as soon as logging companies will invest more money to

processing they will create new jobs and turn people from illegal

operations to the processing facilities," he said.

Others say Russian authorities must attack corruption and re-assert

control over timber resources.

"That's really the crisis. It's a crisis of control. It's a lack of

control in the forest, and it's devastating the ecosystems here,"

said Josh Newell of Friends of the Earth, an international

environmental activist group.

He and other environmentalists say sustainable use of Russia's

forests could eliminate widespread poverty and drive economic growth

in this region. But the alternative -- what's happening now -- is a

worsening environmental disaster.

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