Sinancha river mouth.

We plan, together with municipal and national park administrations, via information and advocacy campaign in our own magazine “Ecology and Business” and in mass media, to promote sustainable complex forest use under new legislation and undertake efforts to resolve resource concerned and land tenure conflicts. We specifically plan to help solve existing conflict between logging company Roschinski, running FSC certification, national park “Udege Legend” in Krasnoarmeiski municipality of Primorye and local indigenous communities with a target of more conservation in this highly valuable forest.

Udege Legend Landscape.

This conflict has already moved to national Arbitration, involved our colleagues in Greenpeace Russia and in national Association of Indigenous People of North (RAIPON), and we are responsible to work hardly with indigenous communities here and with FSC system to discover dirty methods of timber business, which provokes contradiction between indigenous and environmental goals in favour of destroying the richest forests. We consider our NGO role as very important for Krasnoarmeiski municipality, which is lacking reasonable governance by the local and regional officials. Since this governance is based upon too complex and unclear legislation, high level of corruption and low legal respect.

Another reason of our explanatory activity there is high demand on the most economically and environmentally valuable timber species in China from the area. Failure of formerly highly developed Soviet industry of non-timber forest products (NTFP), involved all the remote forest towns into sustainable harvesting, processing and marketing also need serious consulting, advocacy and explanatory activities. So, our constant goal is to keep demonstrating broad opportunities of NTFP industry to local officials, businesses and communities, to bring them clear explanation on appropriate use of new legislation in favour of NTFP development and recreational use of all the ecological values of Ussuri taiga. This way to reduce interest to logging activities and turn it to more sustainable models is obviously the only way to warrantee conservation of all the values in national park and in the whole municipality.