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No. 41 Spring/Summer 2006 In this Issue: • Climate Change Stories from the Russian Arctic • Studying the Impacts of a Chinese Chemical Spill in Bolonsky Zapovednik • Abkhazia's Ritsinsky Relict National Park • Avian Flu: Russian Policies Raise Concerns PROMOTING BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN RUSSIA AND THROUGHOUT NORTHERN EURASIA CONTENTS CONTENTS Voice from the Wild ECOLOGICAL TOURISM (A Letter from the Editors)........................................................1 Encouraging Whale Watching and Marine PROTECTED AREAS Ecotourism in Russia...................................................................15 Bolonsky Zapovednik Studying the Impacts The Great Baikal Trai........................………………………………....18 of a Chinese Chemical Spill ................................………………...2 FOR DISCUSSION Developing and Regulating Tourism: Striking a Delicate Balance in Abkhazia's Avian Flu: Russian Official Ritsinsky Relict National Park.............................……………….5 Policies Raise Concerns................………….………………………..21 ENDANGERED ECOSYSTEMS CONSERVATION HISTORY Pleistocene Park: Return of the Reflections on the Social History Mammoth's Ecosystem.................................................................8 of Pechoro-Ilychsky Zapovednik...........…………………….25 Coastal Dwellers on Russia's ABSTRACTS IN RUSSIAN...............................................29 Chukotka Peninsula Report the Effects of Climate Change...........................12 CONSERVATION CONTACTS..............Back Cover Russian Conservation News is produced with support form many The mission of the Center for Russian Nature wonderful conservation-minded people! We could not do our work Conservation (CRNC) is to promote the conser- without you! Special thanks to: vation of nature in Russia and throughout the Gerard Boere, Dave Cline & Olga Romanenko, Evelyn Cochran, former Soviet Union, and to assist conservation Harriet Crosby, Susan Helms Daley, Winslow Duke, Bernt Dybern, groups in that region through information Brock Evans, Matthew Foley, Carol Foss, Kevin Gilligan, exchange, coordination of professional and Freeborn Jewett, George Johnson, Mati Kaal, Nadezhda Kavrus- education exchanges, and provision of techni- Hoffman, Eliza Klose, Richard Lanier (Trust for Mutual cal assistance to protected areas. CRNC is a proj- Understanding), Phyllis Lathrope, Thomas McCorkle & Brook ect of the Tides Center. Stevens, Richard McQuire, Mary Anne Mekosh, Kazuo Morimoto, Lois Morrison, Douglas P. Murray, Gordon Orians, Peyton Owston, Jose Vasco Sousa, Hunter & Lois Staley, Greg Streveler, Townsend Swayze, Thomas Van Pelt, William & Susan Wasch, Gary Waxmonsky, Don & Patricia Weeden, and Fred Welty. RCN has many partners and friends in Russia, including the Partnership for Zapovedniks, whose mission is to offer organizational, technical, and financial © Copyright 2006 CRNC/Tides Center. help to zapovedniks and national parks in Russia. ISSN 1026-6380 Spring/Summer 2006, No. 41 Russian Conservation News Voice from the Wild (A Letter from the Editors) This forty-first issue of Russian Conservation News goes to press not long after world leaders gathered in St. Petersburg for the G8 summit, the first with host nation Russia in the role of rotating Chair. One of the three major agenda items discussed at the event was global energy security. In their final communique’ on EDITORIAL BOARD this important topic, the G8 nations acknowledged the interconnection of ener- gy security, economic growth, and environmental protection. Environmentalists Executive Editor: Margaret Williams were pleased that the global leaders included energy efficiency and conservation, development of low-carbon and renewable energy sources, and addressing cli- Assistant Editor: Melissa Mooza mate change as part of a common strategy to meet long-term global energy Guest Editors: Andrea Williams, demands. However, general consensus among conservationists – in Russia and Chas Dewey abroad – was that the summit resulted in too few concrete commitments and investments in this sphere. Managing Editor: Natalya Troitskaya Graphics Artist: Maksim Dubinin Russian President Vladimir Putin also demonstrated disappointing lack of leader- ship and vision when, at a summit event, he stated that “the next fifty years Design and Layout: Design Group A4 belong to hydrocarbon energy.” This irresponsible pronouncement, clearly grounded in the dependence of the Russian economy on hydrocarbon industries, Computer Consultation: Natalie Volkova is another example of a major world leader's failure to recognize the urgency in addressing global climate change. Translation: Melissa Mooza Yet for the earth's far northern regions, these changes are already palpable. A sur- Subscriptions Manager: vey conducted by the Russian office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Sarah Millspaugh offers numerous examples of the environmental and social impacts being felt in Contributing Authors: N. Agaltseva, the Russian Arctic. WWF collected accounts from residents of several coastal E. Hoyt, E. Kuznetsov, M. Mooza, communities in Russia's northeastern most province, the Chukotka Autonomous I. Nikitina, A. Suknyev, L. Woodson, Region, who report observations of anomalous weather patterns, landscape fea- and S. Zimov tures, and faunal distribution and behavior. Their stories – summarized in this Contributing Artists and issue of RCN – indicate that substantial changes have already occurred and fur- Photographers: N. Agaltseva, D. Berjak, ther raise concerns about how the Arctic's indigenous people will preserve their A. Burdin, V. Kavry, N. Maleshin, traditional way of life in the future. I. Nikitina, A. Svetlakov, L. Woodson, and S. Zimov In this installment of the journal, we turn our attention to another issue addressed by this July by the G8: highly pathogenic avian influenza. Specifically, Acknowledgments: Maps of Russia's protected areas that are featured in this we present an analysis of some of Russia's more controversial policies to control issue were prepared using the Protected the spread of the virus, which prescribe shooting migratory waterfowl and other Areas GIS database of the Biodiversity wild birds. Despite strong criticisms of such methods from the United Nations as Conservation Center/International Socio- well as many Russian conservationists, at least one Russian region, the Tyumen Ecological Union. For more information, please consult http://oopt.info/gis/data- Oblast in Siberia, has implemented a policy to shoot and frighten wild birds with- base-eng.html in a two-kilometer radius of human settlements, resulting in the senseless death of approximately 14,000 wild birds over a month's time ON THE COVER In this issue we return to a frequently covered in RCN's pages: the development of ecotourism in northern Eurasia's wild places. We share a report on the chal- lenges of ecotourism development in the Republic of Abkhazia as well as the Russian Far East, where an initiative called the Far East Russia Orca Project is helping to assess the status and prospects of marine ecotourism, including whale watching. Further inland, an ambitious long-term project is underway to create a 2,000-kilometer-long system of trails around Lake Baikal, described in this RCN. Finally, as with all successful publications and conservation projects there are always talented people at work, researching, translating, writing and word- smithing. We are glad to welcome back one of those people, Lisa Woodson, a for- mer RCN editor and regular contributor to the journal, as she shares a historical overview of Pechoro-Ilychsky Zapovednik in the northern Ural Mountains. At the same time we bid a bittersweet farewell to Melissa Mooza, RCN's Assistant Editor extraordinaire, who will be leaving Moscow to return to the US after three hugely productive years with the journal. Melissa has been not only a highly skilled linguist and writer, but a steadfast advocate for accuracy and preservation of each contributing author's style and voice. We have all been the beneficiaries of Melissa's great work and as the chief editor I am grateful for her enormous contribution in bringing the trials and victories of Russian conservation to the Cover artwork by students at the Moscow Academic Lyceum of the Russian Academy of Arts. West. Spring/Summer 2006 No. 41 1 Protected Areas Protected Areas Bolonsky Zapovednik Studying the Impacts of a Chinese Chemical Spill By Irina Nikitina he November 2005 explosion that Wetlands of Toccurred at China's Jilin Chemical International Industrial Company released close to Importance. 100 tons of benzene compounds and other toxic chemical wastes into the The benzene slick Songhua River, a large tributary of the moved along the Amur River. This discharge increased Amur River – from levels of pollution in the entire middle Khabarovsk, at the and lower flow of the Amur River. It is junction of the Amur having inevitable impacts on many and Ussuri Rivers, to wetland areas, including the Lake Nikolaevsk, at the Bolon wetlands, by altering the hydro- Amur's mouth – du- chemical composition of water bodies ring December 2005 and disrupting the established ecologi- and January 2006, cal balance. but did not come in direct contact with Bolonsky Zapovednik is located at the Bolonsky Zapoved- center of a network of wetlands in the nik. The ice cover Amur River Valley and is directly on Lake Bolon and linked to the Amur River's hydrological the Amur River system through Lake Bolon. The served as a buffer. reserve has particular biogeographic