Greenpeace finds `barbaric forestry' in Russia

VLADIVOSTOK -- Greenpeace on May 23 called for an end to destruction of the unique forests of the Russian far east by Russian and multinational logging companies. A three-week expedition based on the organisation's flagship, the MV Greenpeace, revealed barbaric forestry practices by a Russian-Hyundai joint venture company.

The expedition also uncovered logging by a Russian company in former nature reserve territory, the home of the endangered Siberian tiger.

“Russia's forests are being razed and shipped abroad”, said Mary Blake of Greenpeace International. “Hyundai have the resources to back environmentally and socially responsible forestry which will ensure a future for both forests and the Russian economy.”

Greenpeace's inspection of Hyundai's joint venture with a Russian logging enterprise at the village of Svetlaya, 800 kilometres north of Vladivostok, found widespread damage. Among the violations of environmental laws and the contract signed with the local authority in 1990, Greenpeace found:

• extensive clear-cutting, mostly of healthy trees (the contract requires preferential cutting of dead and dying trees);

• thousands of cubic metres of logs left in piles on the ground to rot, because the company cut more trees than it can transport;

• no successful replanting;

• logging in water protection zones;

• pollution by oil used in logging machinery.

The Greenpeace expedition also found extensive forest damage by the Russian-owned company Melnichnoye. This company operates in territory lifted from the internationally renowned Sikhote-Alin nature reserve in the 1950s and forming part of the Siberian tiger's range. The company is breaking quotas for logging of cedar, a protected species in Russia, and logging in water protection zones.

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