Virgin Siberian Forests to be Clearcut for China

by Danielle Knight

According to the regional Forest Service office here in Chita, an area of 1.2 million acres along the Argun River bordering China is being leased to several Russian logging companies, including Kluchi and Epos, which will then allow Chinese companies to manage the logging operations.

Most of this area is frontier or untouched forest and about 80 to 85 percent of it will be cleared within five years, according to Eugene Atamankin, deputy director of the Chita Forest Service.

He says that in general Chinese logging companies are more conscientious about the environment than Russian companies and they obey the forestry laws. They often replant a clearcut area, adds Atamankin.

Various trade routes have been created along the border near this area to allow the timber across. Most of the logging and hauling is done in winter when the river is frozen since there are no bridges over the Argun in the area.

Atamankin says Russian companies are currently preparing a business plan for the creation of a river barge operation to haul the timber across the river, a proposal that has stunned and outraged local environmental groups.

"Of course we are opposed to their opening up frontier forest," says Inga Zinovieva, director of the Dauria Ecological Center, a local environmental organization based here that only recently found out about the proposal.

Zinovieva is a non-governmental organization (NGO) representative on the local advisory board on forest resource issues, but had heard nothing about the proposal before.

"This just shows how little information is available to us and that the vast majority of Chita's forests are under threat today and at any time could be logged," she says.

One of the problems with this project, according to Dave Martin, coordinator of the Siberian program for the California-based Pacific Environment and Resources Center (PERC), is that local authorities do not have the resources to ensure that the Chinese companies reforest the land.

"There is no guarantee that they will fulfil their obligation because they are only there for five years and will then leave the area," he says.

Demand for Russian timber products has increased since 1998 when China established new domestic forest conservation laws, which so far have been well enforced. Several years ago, China was forced to overhaul its forestry laws after a half-century of exploitation led to disastrous levels of soil erosion and catastrophic flooding.

Just north of the world's most populous nation lies one of the earth's largest tracts of pristine forest. Known as the Russian Taiga, the seemingly endless expanse of trees stretches from the Ural mountains to the Pacific Ocean and represents 54 percent of the world's coniferous forests and about 26 percent of its remaining frontier forests.

The Taiga provides a habitat for a vast array of rare and endangered species, including the Siberian tiger, the Amur leopard, the brown bear and the Japanese crane.

Siberia is also prone to forest fires which destroy five times as many trees as are lost to logging. Travelling along the trans-Siberian railway you can see whole hillsides of dead forests, the result of uncontrolled burning.

After forest fires, logging is one of the key threats to Siberia's forests. According to a report released in June by the international environmental group Greenpeace, about one-fifth of logging in Russia is illegal.

According to Zinovieva, local newspapers carry many advertisements seeking timber harvesters. "These ads are placed by Russian middlemen who then sell illegally to Chinese buyers," she says.

Atamankin says that while it is possible to monitor the operations of larger companies such as Kluchi, it is impossible for the forestry service to keep track of all of the small independent dealers.

"It's definitely a problem," he told IPS. "We don't have the resources to monitor the whole region and we don't have the situation under control."

Atamankin and Zinovieva say another obstacle lies with a lack of federal legislation that would help the regional forest service monitor and fine people who are illegally logging and exporting timber to China. Right now the ability to inspect timber shipments lies with the tax and customs authorities and is out of the Forest Service's jurisdiction, says Atamankin.

"The current federal administration is not prioritizing the issue and lack expertise in forest issues," he says.

Zinovieva adds that there are currently no defined criteria for how logging licenses are given. "It's a very closed process which in turn easily leads to corruption," she says.

Chita's Forest Service recently proposed 27 different forest protection laws but not one of them was adopted by the regional parliament. Now that it is an election year, Atamankin says, regional politicians are not paying any attention to environmental issues.

In 1997, the regional government did adopt a law that would allow about 25 percent of Chita's forests to be preserved. Currently only about 1.5 to two percent is completely protected, says Zinovieva.

Zinovieva along with Tatyana Strizhova, a scientist with the Institute of Natural Resources of the Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences here in Chita, are currently working on a voluntary basis to map out the proposed protected areas.

"They created this law, but no money was given to demarcate the protected areas," says Strizhova.

She worries that Russian President Vladimir Putin's decree in May to liquidate the two main environmental protection bodies will further hinder this effort to create nature reserves.

The decree transferred the functions of the Russian State Committee on Ecology and the Federal Forest Service to the Ministry of Natural Resources, a body that environmentalists warn is more focused on natural resource extraction, not protection.

"The decree could lead to further manipulation of Chita's natural resources and could altogether halt the money needed to protect these areas, " she says.