Press Release

Contact:
 Adlai Amor, Media Director
 Tel: (+1-202) 729-7736 Email: aamor@wri.org

New Atlas Reveals Russian Taiga to Have Lost Much of Its Legendary Wilderness

MOSCOW, Russia and WASHINGTON, D.C., USA, April 3, 2002 - The legendary Russian taiga – the world’s largest forest– is not the virtually endless wilderness it is often thought to be. Only about a quarter remains in large road-less areas that are undisturbed by modern land use, says a new report released today in Moscow and Washington by Global Forest Watch (GFW).

The Atlas of Russia’s Intact Forest Landscapes was produced by GFW Russia, a country-wide non-governmental network of major environmental and research organizations. GFW Russia has carried out a systematic and detailed inventory of Russia’s entire forest zone, looking for disturbances such as logging, mining, and associated roads and fires.

Thousands of satellite images were used along with hundreds of ground observations to verify the result. Some field expeditions spent weeks in road-less territory in search of intact wilderness.

“Intactness can not be artificially restored,” says Alexey Yaroshenko of Greenpeace Russia, one of the authors of the atlas, “Disturbances are virtually irreversible. Most of the world’s forest is already either destroyed or disturbed. Responsible land users should be extra careful before entering any of the remaining intact landscapes.”

“If you don’t map it you can’t manage it”, says Dmitry Aksenov of the Socio-Ecological Union International, another author, “Governments and corporations don’t collect this information. This is why Global Forest Watch Russia has to do it.”

The result is a practical guide to precaution. The Atlas uses nearly a hundred maps to show the precise boundaries of Russia’s remaining intact forest landscapes (mostly in the scale of 1:1.5 million). Public authorities and industrial developers will finally have the information they need to adapt land use to an important conservation value.

A total of 289 million hectares (26 percent) of Russia’s forests remain in areas that have no signs of infrastructure or modern land use and are at least 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) in size (intact forest landscapes).

Approximately 5 percent of the intact forest landscapes have special protection at the Federal level. The system of protected areas in most administrative regions and ecological regions of Russia is inadequate in representation and size to reflect the conservation needs of intact forest landscapes.

Eastern Siberia is the most pristine with 39 percent of the forest zone in intact forest landscapes, followed by the Russian Far East (30 percent) and Western Siberia (25 percent). European Russia is by far the least pristine with only 9 percent intact. Anthropogenic fire regimes affect large areas in northern Siberia and the Far East.

A belt across southern Russia is the most affected by modern land use. Temperate broad-leafed and mixed conifer-broad-leafed forests are at special risk. Intact forest landscapes may disappear within whole ecological regions or even vegetation zones without decisive action during the next few years.

“This Atlas breaks new ground,” says author Alexander Isaev, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, forest minister of the USSR in the Gorbachev administration, “Russia is the first country to document its forest heritage in this way. Other countries must follow, so that we get a global picture.”

“It is also a great step forward for civil society and independent forest monitoring,” continues Isaev, “Advanced technology was used to great benefit. And through Transparent World, a function has been created in Russia to make satellite images broadly available at low cost. These are achievements of international significance.”

The organizations behind Global Forest Watch Russia include Greenpeace Russia, Socio-Ecological Union International, Biodiversity Conservation Center, International Forest Institute, R&D Center ScanEx, and Transparent World (all Moscow), the Fund for 21st Century Altai (Barnaul), the Friends of the Siberian Forests (Krasnoyarsk), the Bureau for Public Outreach Campaigns (Vladivostok), and the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC.

The work has been supported by the home furnishing company IKEA, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Turner Foundation, and the World Resources Institute. The work has benefited from software donated by Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. and ERDAS Inc.

Global Forest Watch Russia is an informal, country-wide network of civil society and research organizations from all corners of Russia. The goal of GFW Russia is to improve the conservation and use of Russia's forest landscapes by providing decision-makers and the general public with accurate, accessible and practically useful information. No advocacy work is allowed under the GFW Russia name, and all reports must undergo rigorous scientific review. GFW Russia was founded in 1999 in Krasnoyarsk. Global Forest Watch international is an initiative by the World Resources Institute.