ALL-RUSSIAN MEETING OF FEDERAL PROTECTED
AREAS DIRECTORS
On December 25, 2003, an All-Russian meeting of federal PA directors took place.
The meeting was conducted by V.P. Roschupkin, the first Vice
Minister and the Head of the State Forest Service. Generally, all the
statements of the chief MNR officials related to reserves and national
parks, and particularly to the Department of Protected Natural Areas,
Objects and Biodiversity Conservation expressed discontent, and sometimes
even annoyance. All speeches (by the Deputy Head of the Department of
Scientific Support and Innovations Policy A.V. Panfilov and others)
included the phrase that the speaker joins the opinion of the preceding
one, and if the Department currently in charge of the PAs is to be dissolved,
he or she is ready to take the relevant specialists to his/her department.
At the same time, the speakers demonstrated misunderstanding, ignorance, and, very often, unwillingness to identify and understand the problems faced by the reserves today. It was evident, that people in the MNR are unwilling to take into consideration the specific features of PA management — remoteness from post offices, and the fact that these institutions structures do not “live” in Moscow and simply cannot personally come to all the MNR departments regarding their sore points. Meanwhile, Statutes on reserves and national parks were persistently called “Regulations”, whereas reserve lands, from the MNR law department’s point of view, in the new land legislation have no specific designation and should be considered separately from reserves and national parks as organisations.
Regarding the designation of new nature reserves and national parks, it was announced with no confusion right from the tribune that the documents on many proposed PAs are not kept in the MNR with no progress for many years (!) and they (the MNR) do not know what to do with them further. The questions V.P. Roschupkin asked to directors of nature reserves and national parks were largely about such “burning” issues as: how large are overgrown forests, what is the scale of sanitary felling, what are the prices for construction and firewood timber the PA sells, etc. Therefore, the declaration of S.S. Korshunov, the Head of the Department of Industrial Control and Auditing, that 108 (!) nature reserves and national parks are to be inspected in 2004, did not sound already as sheer utopia – it seemed to be true. There were made several remarks that the MNR possesses information that some PAs are involved in illegal timber trade and poaching. However, there was no answer to the question that came directly from the audience to name at least some of these PAs. The question asked by A.A. Tishkov as to how much such inspections cost, remained unanswered as well.
In conclusion, the directors learnt that not a single PA will receive funding in the upcoming year until all the nature reserves and national parks submit the required set of documents for 2004 (one of the forms to be filled in was presented only at the meeting). Reference to the fact that all the forms are available at the MNR web-site turned to be misleading: here, from Moscow, we tried to find the documents among the samples of standard departmental forms displayed at the site, but found nothing.
In general, the situation was really depressing. We do not know how soon the decree reflecting outputs of the meeting will be issued. One thing, however, is evident: we were spectators of a well-staged performance, and the guilty persons are already identified. To finish the picture described above, NGOs, such as WWF and GreenPeace, were not admitted into the hall. There were even attempts to take the BCC representative out of the hall. But even those, who had all legal rights to attend the meeting, were deprived of the MNR public council membership cards. The opponents had no change to take the floor, and the famous V.M. journalist V.M. Peskov was peremptorily asked to sit down, and could not ask a question.
I do not think we should keep it silent. Let us develop strategy and tactics to fight for our rights. Or other, I wonder, how did the system of reserves managed to survive for 85 years without the MNR?!
Nikolai Alexandrovich Maleshin,
Director of Non-Commercial Partnership
“Partnership For Reserves”,
Managing Editor of the journal
“Russian Conservation News”
