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Table of content:
THE NEW PLAN OF NATURE RESERVES CREATION
The new plan of nature reserves establishment has been adopted by the
Russian government. The government directive issued at the 23rd of May, 2001
states that 9 nature reserves and 12 national parks will be organized during
the next 10 years. Though this quantity is significantly less than it were
in the previous plan, some reserves and parks situated in the conflict zones
are enlisted in the new directive. These territories are Kalevala national
park (unwanted by Karelian government), Onezhskoye Pomorye (which the
Arkhangelsk regional administration and forest industry do not welcome),
Kologriv Forest (that is already destroyed according to space data),
Sredneussuriysky (placed in geologists' research area) with the original
square remained, Buzuluksky Bor (now occupied by oil companies). But many
important territories supposed to be reserved until 2005 escape from the new
list. The full text of the directive (in Russian) see at
http://www.forest.ru/rus/legislation/laws/npa-list.html
BARK BEETLE SEIZES RUSSIA
6.5 thousand hectares of fir forests were killed by bark beetle, the deputy
head of the Ministry of Natural Resources information agency press-service
Lev Krylov says. He adds 140 thousand traps for beetles were installed in
the forests. According to the Middle Russia Centre for Plant Protection, 1.5
billion bark beetles were caught. 3.5 cubic meters of wood were saturated
with the poison specific for the bark beetles. Specialists predict 3 time
bark beetle population growth in Moscow region because of dry and heat
weather.
Moscow region faced the same problems in the previous year. But in such
regions as neighbouring Tver region the forest ecosystems have being
destroyed more quickly than in others. Without immediate phitosanitary
measures Tver region will soon l ose 30 per cents of its wood, the head of
the Centre for Plant Protection Mikhail Fedotov states. The square of
invaded forest has increased from 2 thousand hectares in April to 10
thousand hectares in June. Warm and humide air and huge massivs of infested
wood accompany the bark beetle seizure. The foresters hope that weather will
get colder and it might save the remained forest. But now the volume of
sanitary cutting increases. Unfortunately under this mask some forestries
whoes task is to care about forest just purvey a good timber, so Russian
forests could face not only forest pests but "forest keepers" invasion.
RUSSIAN ECO-DOCTRINE DOES EXIST AND GETTING OFFICIAL SUPPORT
Russian Ecological Doctrine prepared by Russian NGOs has been gaining
support of the responsible bodies.
Through the last years Russian public movement was efficient in preventing
different dangerous projects. Environmental movement was also very active in
human rights protection. This, clearly, was very irritating for the
Government - because couple of "loyal" organization could not be much of
help for anti-environmental image of official Russia.
Instead of setting peace and cooperation with the public of their own
country, Russian authorities (or their advisors) decided to go old bad
greenwash way - that is, to do another attempt to create phony public
movement, to declare it one and only sane and cooperative one - and thus to
both ensure good image within international community and to get "public
environmental" approval for any projects (like the nuclear waste imports, GE
development etc). President Putin has recentely claimed that he wanted
Russian ecological doctrine to be created. But those organizations and
specialists Putin addressed this wish still didn't do anything practical in
the field, they will probably compose and present some doctrine to the end
of the year.
The majority of environmental movement for decades working on sustainability
issues found themselves excluded from the process. As far as the real
environmental leaders have their vision of Russian environmental policy they
prepared their draft of Ecological Doctrine and presented in to public in
the beginning of April. The document was sent to all the ministries,
committies, regional authorities of different level for comments and many of
them provided positive feedback to the authors. Socio-Ecological Union
(Russian branch) is one of the Doctrine team.
Up today we have more than 40 answers from different responsible bodies.
That is a great result.
We are going to officially present it to Russian Government and we hope that
it will be accepted. But to "help" our Government to make this decision we
need international support and awareness. Otherwise, Russia will happily
report on Rio+10, but there will be no real work, no real progress and no
real public involvement behind that.
Full text of the document is available at:
http://www.seu.ru/documents/eng/doctrine
For further information:
Svyatoslav Zabelin, Socio-Ecological Union, e-mail: zabelin@online.ru
RUSSIAN PEOPLE WANT INDEPENDENT ECOLOGICAL CONTROL
In commemoration of 1 year jubilee of Russian Ecological Committee and
Forest Service abolishment Russian ecologists has launched the internet
referendum questioning people about their attitude to three problems:
abolishment of the national ecological committee, abolishment of The Forest
Service, plans of shipment of nuclear waste to Russia. Those three questions
were supposed to be the ones of a national referendum which last year greens
collected 2,5 million signatures for. But Central Election Committee
rejected the referendum initiative by finding 600 thousand signatures
incorrect. Since that time and despite of all offical efforst to discredit
referendum idea people's attitude to the issues has not changed. That has
been confirmed by the virtual poll provided by different ecological internet
sites including the site of Russian Forest Club www.forest.ru. According to
the results of the Forest Club poll, more than 80 per cents of people think
that independent forest service should exist and almost 90 per cent have
voted for independent ecoligical committee restoration.
Despite the fact that former ecological committee and forest service
activities many times contradicted the public opinion the majority of the
people understand that independent ecological and forest control should
exist in a country considered to be civilized.
FOREST SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE
International science Internet-conference on forest complexes issues will
take place in November 1-30 in Bryansk, Russia. The name of the event is
"Forest complexes: state and prospectives for development". The aim of the
conference is to establish contacts and exchange of scientific and technical
information among the sicntists and specialists working in forestry field,
forest and timber prosessing industry.
Conference will focuse on:
- forest and park economy, forest management
- garden and park and landscape design
- ecological problems and ways to solve them
- progressive technologies and technics of harvesting and forest restoration
industry
- mordern design and technologies for producing timber processing facilities
and equipment
- and some other themes.
All the reports covering these issues will be put on Internet and will be
available at:
http://www.science.bsea.bryansk.ru
Languages of the conference: Russian and English.
For further information please contact:
Dr. Pamfilov, e-mail: VSivakov@bsea.bryansk.ru
tel. +7 (0832) 74-16-46
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Forest Club model projects and sites
