Coordination Council’s Journey Amidst High Waters of the Mezen and Irva
Coordination Council assessed the Silver Taiga Foundation’s efforts through immersion into the project activity.
A regular face-to-face meeting of the Coordination Council of the Silver Taiga Foundation was held on 6-7 June 2017. Przemyslaw Majewski, Coordination Council Chairman, Mikhail Karpachevsky, Marcelo Levi, Natalia Sedusova, Council members, and the Foundation director Yury Pautov discussed the current status of the Foundation, reviewed its financial reports, the information about the changed staff, and the issues related to the High Conservation Value Forests and Model River Mezen projects. A special focus was given to 2017 plans implementation and mid-term perspectives of the Foundation.
The meeting ended with a three-day field trip for the Coordination Council members to Udora district. The experts inspected the Model River Mezen project having seen some of its sites. They visited a guest house in the Nizhny Vyliyb village, and on the following day they took boats along the Mezen and Irva rivers to Krivushevo, where the AgroUdora cooperative has its main fishery plot. Owing to the fishermen’s efforts this god-forsaken village has preserved some houses for the cooperative staff and tourists. The members of the Coordination Council met the fishermen, discussed the current situation and the cooperative perspectives. The fishers shared their plans to maintain the fish population at the fishery plot, spoke about challenges they face as they conduct their economic activity. For instance, the cooperative suffers too much attention from regulatory authorities, and is not always well understood by the Komi Republic Department of State Control, Supervision and Protection of Fishery Resources, North-West Territorial Administration, Federal Fishery Agency. The participants of the meeting discussed possible solutions for the debatable issues.
At the end of the field trip, on 9 June, the guests had a tour of “historical places” of the village of Krivushevo. The visiting team had a look at abandoned fields overgrown with trees, an old windmill, and still preserved horse track connecting Krivushevo with the Glotovo village. On the way back, the visitors fully concentrated on contemplating the beauty of the northern nature. The trip was held at the period of high water in the Mezen and Irva, those were the first warm days in Komi, so the visitors were lucky to see some rare bird species, like the Red Book oyster catchers, swans and ducks, migrating. An elk appearing unexpectedly on the bank of the river caused true admiration of the experts as they were rafting.
According to the Coordination Council members, such open informal communication closing the agenda was useful and informative; it allowed obtaining a full view of the project and getting unforgettable impressions of the trip to the remote rural area.