The Foundation ecologists Alexander Borovlyov and Nikolay Shilov together with the driver Sergey Davydov have come back from the field trip to the headwaters of the Vychegda River, where they collected samples of benthos and plankton on the Cher Vychegodskaya and the Lopju tributaries within the framework of the project on the assessment of loggings’ impact on water streams.
Two children’s ecological expeditions entitled “Let’s protect the Mezen from rubbish!” were organized by the Silver Taiga Foundation jointly with the Children’s Activity Center of Usogorsk in the framework of the Model River Mezen project in June-July.
The Silver Taiga Foundation employees have come back from a week-long business trip to the Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve. The objective of the trip was to prepare the routes for the new educational season, but not only that. It was also important to introduce the young foundation employees to the peculiarities of the natural processes taking place in the taiga forests and deepen their knowledge about the pristine forests and forest biodiversity conservation. The colleagues have willingly shared their impressions of the trip.
Expedition consisting of Silver Taiga ecologist Alexander Borovlev and representatives of Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Dymov, Viktor Startsev and Alexander Sharikov has returned from a short trip to Sedka River. The aim of the expedition was to evaluate the erosion processes and other changes on small and middle water passages after loggings.
The expedition was held under the project «Evaluation of the long term impact of forestry (logging) on water resource», which is being realized by Silver Taiga Foundation since 2014.
The project is being realized on different levels and pilot rivers of different scale have been chosen. On the big rivers (Mezen, Vychegda), where the fixed stage gauges are functioning, it is possible to carry out a comparative study of the situation over a period of several years using hydro-meteorological service data. On the middle-sized rivers, where the loggings have been carried out at different times and to different extents, methods of bioindication are used. As for small rivers and streams, where the loggings were carried out not long ago or are being carried out nowadays, it is possible to see the changes of the bottom-land, stream-flow itself and directly water-shed.
The Sedka River is a right tributary of Luza Riva, which in its turn has a number of smaller rivers and streams. Here forest operations are being carried out with the use of modern equipment, which leaves deep grooves, ravines on the slopes. As a result of it subsoil and sand fall into the streams – river tributaries, reallocate in its bottom-land, and form stream loads, aits and so on stepwise.
Unfortunately, this time the expedition could not get to all the observation sites due to the washed out roads. However, some of the distinctive points it was possible to note. Observations will be continued.
Besides, Silver Taiga has started to interview old residents of Udora district under the project «Evaluation of the long term impact of forestry (logging) on water resource». These people have valuable information as they have had an opportunity to observe the situation during a long period of time. Many of them remember about concrete examples of the local changes on Mezen and its tributaries due to the large-scale loggings. These data will be a good addition to the data received during the investigations.
Silver Taiga Foundation has held a three-day seminar-consultation for the Lunvozh LLC employees.
Lunvozh is a small logging enterprise with an annual felling volume of about 200 thousand cubic meters in the Kirov district. Located in the city of Murashi, Lunvozh LLC has a lease base not only on the territory of the Kirov region, but also in two forestry units of the Komi Republic – Letskoye and Priluzskoye. The company has its own sawmill plant and supplies pulpwood to the Ilim Group enterprises and Mondi Syktyvkar. Therefore, availability of FSC certificate is especially important for it.
Summer Field School is over. The School was organized for the schoolchildren from Udora district of Komi in Krivushevo village located on Irva river – Mezen tributary – by Silver Taiga Foundation jointly with the Children’s Activity Center of Usogorsk village (Udora district of Komi) and with the participation of the Special Protected Natural Area (SPNA) Center of the Komi Republic.
As usual, the Silver Taiga Foundation ecologists have started another field season with preparation of the Komi Model Forest demonstration routes for educational courses, seminars and excursions, which have already been organized and conducted by the Foundation during summer and autumn for fifteen years and have always been popular among the forest relations participants – logging companies, scientists, representatives of the forest service, including the ones from other regions and countries, industry-related educational institutions…
Boreal forest platform will contribute to the proper transition to the intensive forestry in Russia.
Silver Taiga director Yury Pautov participated in the round-table discussion held on May 19 in Moscow by WWF Russia. The discussion was devoted to the development of the boreal forest platform with the focus on intensive forestry.
During the last meeting of Silver Taiga Coordination Council held on May 05 the composition of the Council was changed and a new Chairman was elected.
Coordination Council is the supreme management body of the Silver Taiga Foundation, which carries out management of the Foundation activity and ensures the observance by the Foundation of the goals it was created to accomplish – defines the priority fields of activity, goals, and objectives of the Foundation; appoints the Foundation Director, defines his/her job duties; reviews and approves annual working plans and reports of the Foundation.
All the members of the Coordination Council participated in the meeting – Mikhail Karpachevski, Przemyslaw Majewski, Natalia Sedusova and Jeremy Williams. Silver Taigadirector Yuri Pautov was also invited. The Coordination Council members satisfied the statement of Jeremy Williams about his withdrawal from the Coordination Council since May 05, 2015. They expressed gratitude to Jeremy for his efficient and long term work as the Coordination Council Chairman and for the great contribution to the development of Silver Taiga Foundation. Jeremy Williams was elected to the Coordination Council membership in 2004 and since 2008 he was its Chairman.
Silver Taiga first director Przemyslaw Majewski was elected as a new Chairman of the Coordination Council. Przemyslaw Majewski had been working in Komi for seventeen years. He contributed a lot to the development of sustainable forest management in the Republic of Komi during this period. Since 2013 Przemyslaw Majewski has been living and working in Sweden.
Jeremy Williams has proposed Marcelo Levi as a new member of the Coordination Council. Marcelo is an international consultant and founding partner of Responsible Forestry Solutions (RFS), based in Toronto, Canada. RFS specializes in forest management and supply chain certification, as well as the evaluation of policies and programs that promote forest conservation and the participation of stakeholders in the benefits of active forest management.
Marcelo is also a Lead Auditor for forest management and chain of custody (FSC/PEFC), Marcelo has led extensive collaborative and multi-stakeholder consultation processes, including in his role as Director of Standards Development with FSC-Canada. During 1996-2004 he was one of the founders and coordinators of FSC Canada.
Another regular meeting of the Model River Mezen Project Working Group was held on May 15. The main subject of the discussion was the information about the results of the meetings with the local population, representatives of the relevant institutions and self-government authorities of the Mezen district. The Working Group members discussed also the results of the survey conducted in the three Mezen districts according to the conclusion of the interdistrict conference held in Leshukonskoe village in 2014.
Nikolay Shilov, the project coordinator, made a report on the foregoing topics. A great amount of the information was presented to the members of the Working Group, thus it was said about the local population’s attitude towards the situation with the fishery resources of the Mezen and the quality of the resource management, including justification, practicability and fairness of the existing ways of fishing by the local population. The locals were also asked to give their opinion concerning the reasons of the loss of aquatic bioresources, especially salmon. Different proposals, very often exactly opposite, were put forward by the villagers with regard to easing of the situation. Without doubt, one is unlikely to find an ideal way of restoring the exhausted resource due to ambiguousness of the reasons that led to the current situation, as well as the socio-political situation, which is extremely complicated in rural districts. However, the results of these meetings and the survey helped to learn more about the local population’s opinion. They are also important for correcting the project activity and suggesting the further actions towards saving and restoring the resources of the Mezen.
According to Valentina Semyashkina, Silver Taiga Deputy Director, implementation of the project objectives is a long-term cooperation of all interested parties, including relevant institutions, institutes of science and education, NGOs and the local population. This year Silver Taiga Foundation has signed and is realizing the Cooperation Agreements with FSBI “Komirybvod”, “AgroUdora” cooperative, Specially Protected Natural Areas center of Komi Republic. Besides, several joint actions have been planned with the other structures and organizations, including educational institutions.
The proposals of the Working Group members were taken into consideration during preparation of the activity plan for 2015. Some of them have already been realized, the others will be finished during this summer or autumn. For example, a Field School will be organized in June for the students of the Usogorsk State School. An expedition is scheduled for this August to appraise the amount of the upcoming reclamation work on Irva River. According to the last year expedition, the river and its tributaries became bogged up and overgrown. It leads to shortening of the food supply and to the exhaustion of the fish resources. The monitoring and the replenishment of the salmon’s spawning grounds on the upper reaches of the Mezen River and its tributaries will take place in September-October for the 5th season in a row.
Due to systematic and coordinated actions of all interested parties, the foregoing actions, as well as the future activities of the project would contribute to restoring of fish resources and lead to the sustainable resource management.
Working Group meeting
Working Group meeting
Translated by Denis Popov (student)