vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #542 / Environment / Reading article...

Enraged by illegal cutting of precious cedar trees in their territory villagers of Ariadnoye, located 120 kilometers from the city of Dalnerechensk in central Primorye, urged the local authorities for protection. Having received neither answer nor assistance, the villagers staged a protest on October 27 and invited ecologists and reporters to participate.

“Illegal massive cutting of cedar trees threatens the survival of the village,” local forest guard Konstantin Doroshevsky stated. Doroshevsky initiated the meeting and called the Vladivostok-based branch of the World Wildlife Fund asking them to come to their village.

“About 400 of our villagers depend on small earnings from collecting cedar cones since a few shops, a school and a medical center do not provide enough jobs for all those in need of a living,” Doroshevsky said. Some villagers are engaged in bee-keeping but poachers have cut down almost all of the linden trees near the village, he added.

While the villagers are enraged with the poachers who are robbing them of their last small earnings the local authorities remain passive and uninterested in protecting the villagers’ rights. Local forestry representatives shrug their shoulders and say they can not control the poachers.

“We have numerously asked our local forestry management for assistance but received no valid answer. The police are taking no steps. So we see all of this unlimited ruthlessness, but there is no one to stop it,” another villager Viktor Begun shared.

Denis Smirnov, the WWF representative in charge of forest programs for the Russian Far East, says that, “These cuttings are one hundred percent illegal. There are no signs bounding the authorized territory for cutting, there are no stamps of official woodcutting companies on the stubs. Everywhere there are signs of unprofessional cutting”

“They are true barbarians – they cut out the best part of the trees and leave the remaining stumps to rot. It is not uncommon when the fellerss start to saw a tree but then leave it half-cut if they see it is not suitable for sale,” he lamented.

Illegal cutting started with oak and ash trees, later poachers came for the linden. The cutting of cedar trees started about two months ago. The villagers blame some businessmen from Dalnerechensk to be involved in illegal cutting but they have not been caught red-handed so far.

They put watchmen along the roads and they give warnings to cutters when they see unfamiliar cars approaching the cutting sites, villagers say. Police and officials have never managed to catch any poacher in the act. What they do – promise to make order.

This time the residents, tired of promises coming from local officials, signed and sent letters to all the regional and federal official bodies, with a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin topping the pile.

“We reside in this territory and we should not become the victims of illegal wood cutters. By destroying the cedar trees and linden in our forests they destroy our future,” the letter said.

Cedar cutting has been banned since 1989 but poachers do not seem to care about such things. In the last 50 years more than half of the Far Eastern cedar forests have been devastated.