Putorana dead end, or
how a little-known online publication registered in Latvia, Medusa hopes to deprive the Putoran Reserve of real funding.
Anatoly Mozharov:
Sergey Gorshkov, a hunter and fishing enthusiast in the past, and an outstanding wildlife photographer, went to the Putoran Plateau a few years ago to shoot a local subspecies of snow sheep. There is no need to remind that this is a red book subspecies, which is protected by the state. After the landing, Sergey immediately discovered the recent butchering sites of sheep killed by poachers. The helicopter pilots, military men, geologists and others who fly helicopters there, extract the red book Putorana sheep... for meat! It's no need to say, there is the only one thing that protects (and protects very conditionally) Putoran sheep – the inaccessibility of the plateau for hikers and water travelers, but not for those who use helicopters.
How much damage do poachers do to the population of these animals? Probably not very big. Nobody knows, it can be big. Today, no one is able to answer this question even approximately. In early 2000s we stood on the bank of the Norilka River and talked with the the director of the Putoransky Reserve Vladimir Larin, who estimated the existing population with the words: "There are a lot of sheep.” Do you agree that "a lot", "full amount "countless" - these are not the most accurate numerals. At the end of 80s the last century, the number of sheep on the Putorana plateau was estimated at 1,500 heads, by the beginning of the XXI century there were already 6500 individuals (the reserve occupies only a part of the plateau territory, and about 800 individuals presumably live in it).
Neither then nor now is anyone aware of the correct number of sheep, since the number of Putoran sheep both within the territory of the reserve and outside it (and sheep inhabitat not only in the reserve) has not been taken into account for decades – there are no funds for this.
Moreover, the reserve doesn't have the means to protect Putorana sheep from poachers, wolves and other predators. The reserve doesn't have the means to monitor the physiological state of these ungulates. It's necessary not only to shoot red-book animals to make monitoing (which is provided for by the legislation - "Rules for obtaining objects of the animal world belonging to species listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation ..." (approved.
by resolution The Government of the Russian Federation dated January 6, 1997, N 13)", in accordance with paragraph 2 of which "The extraction of wildlife objects belonging to species listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, with the exception of aquatic biological resources, is allowed in exceptional cases in order to preserve wildlife objects, monitor the state of their populations ..."), but to do a number of biochemical, microbiological and genetic analyses in certified laboratories, and this also costs money.
The shooting for scientific purposes, which I have just mentioned, will still be carried out sooner or later by the staff of the reserve. The reserve staff can only measure and weigh the animals. We'll have to forget about the tests. The weighting and the measuring- this assessment of the animal looks adequate for the century before last, but not for the XXI. But they'll shoot the animals to carry out not a particularly informative "scientific examination".
The Club of Mountain Hunters knew about the problems with the protection of sheep and offered the help. The idea of financial assistance to the Putoransky Nature Reserve was received with enthusiasm and as a result, a project was developed. A significant amount would be allocated to the reserve, which would help both to keep records of the number and to establish animal protection. Almost 30,000,000 rubles is so much money that only a hypocrite is able to call them "payment for hunting". There are no such expensive hunts in nature. This is really a concern for the protection of animals. Not mythical, but quite real. The same funds will make it possible to conduct analyses of the extracted animals according to the full program. The Club asks for the only that the shooting was carried out not by employees of the reserve, but by members of the Club. It can be done not in the reserve, but outside it. The project is designed for three years, its main tasks are to assess the number, population density and territorial placement of snow sheep, to determine the boundaries of the habitats of individual isolated groups of animals, to conduct genetic studies with the removal (extraction) of 6 individuals from the population.
The Federal State Budgetary Institution "Taimyr Reserves" sent the entire set of necessary documents provided for by the regulations for consideration by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation for making a final decision on the implementation of this project, in accordance with the "Administrative Regulations of the Federal Service for Supervision of Nature Management of the provision of state services for the issuance of permits for the extraction of objects of wildlife and flora listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation (approved by the Order of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation dated February 18, 2013 N 60).
The package includes expert opinions of scientists who specialize in the study of snow sheep, which confirm that the planned extraction of animals for scientific purposes does not contradict the existing laws of the Russian Federation, scientific goals and objectives, that the project as a whole is designed to optimize the research and environmental activities of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Taimyr Reserves" both in the Putoransky Reserve and in adjacent territories.
This project is the reason of hysteria over such a blatant fact that hunters are going to finance the work of the reserve for many years, which neither the state nor greenpeace are able to do!
And now we see how the social-media "Medusa" publishes a pamphlet which is full of absurd statements, built on guesses, assumptions and absurd conclusions. What do you think about this attack on the President of the club Edward Bendersky: "Other hunters accused him of corrupt ties with the former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Vladimir Melnikov; the Medusa could not find any evidence of this"? So, I can write in my turn: According the evidence to some people "Medusa" is a pro-fascist publication funded by Islamic terrorists; I could not find any confirmation of this,"then will it be OK? This is a cheap trick from the arsenal of unscrupulous journalists, but it does its dirty work – they didn't seem to lie, but "soiled goods".
Medusa found nothing better than to asks Academician PANI Zheleznov-Chukotsky to comment the situation and he found nothing better than to say an obvious absurdity: "... at the age of 12, a snow sheep ... participates in the social life of the herd, and no one except it can know the structure of the placement of winter main and reserve pastures.” Then he's came to this conclusion, based on his experience. According to his own words, he has been studying sheep for the last 25 years," concludes that it is unacceptable to shoot six (two per year) male overstocks.
I must say, PANI is the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts, created on a voluntary basis by a group of St. Petersburg residents during the collapse of the USSR. They were not accepted as academicians, but they wanted to be listed as academicians – in general, a pardonable weakness. Yesterday, I has also created an academy with quite such a solid name ASAC - the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Crafts named after Lomonosov, Repin and the Polzunov brothers, where I myself am an academician. I am, Mozharov-Nizhny Novgorodsky want to ask Zheleznov-Chukotsky, as an academician of the academician, what kind of twelve-year-old males of snow sheep participate in the social life of the herd, if only females go with the young, including five-, ten-, and twelve-year-olds? And these female sheep know better than any males where there are pastures. One more question is how do the youth of other subspecies of snow sheep,which are regularly and in sufficiently large volumes extracted by hunters, find out where the pastures are located? They don't degrade numerically, but also grows more and more every year? If after 25 years of studying sheep the academician Zheleznov-Chukotsky can only make the conclusions he shared with Medusa, then it is clear why PANI is the top of his scientific career.
Our editorial board is not at all concerned about the "scientific opinion" of Zheleznov-Chukotsky and not the cheap method of "Medusa" – the use of ridiculous statements and unreliable information in the publication in order not to wash, but to get their way. We are concerned about what is behind the position of Greenpeace.
It became clear from the provocative article that the social- media Medusa and the official statement of Greenpeace, funded from foreign funds, are going to fight so that the difficult situation with the protection of Putoran sheep does not change for the better. The lawyer of "Greenpeace of Russia" Mikhail Kreindlin said to "Medusa": "We are going to use all the ways available to us to prevent this from happening." The Greenpeace statement said the following "The permission to shoot Putorana sheep can become a precedent that will destroy the system of protection of red Book species (highlighted by me - A.M.). To prevent this, Greenpeace appealed to Rosprirodnadzor, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport Sergey Ivanov.”
Why do they need it?
The answer may seem paradoxical – they need an imperfect, practically system of "protection" of red book animals doesn' to change for the better, so that everything remains as it is, so that red book animals are practically defenseless before poachers.
Why? It's all about their current system of financing organizations. Who will donate funds to animal protection organizations like Greenpeace if there are so many Red Book animals that there will be no need to put them in the Red Book. If it turns out that limited, rational, inexhaustible hunting will lead to a surge in the number of animals, whose livestock for some reason could not be forced to increase before, the Greenpeace may even be among the outsiders and it'll ruin their reputation. A number of experiments both in our country and abroad clearly demonstrate the phenomenal success of rational hunting in stabilizing the number, and then in the rapid growth of animal populations that had previously demonstrated an extremely depressed state in the conditions of "red Book protection".
This is what the animal rights organizations are afraid when they say beautiful words about the "inadmissibility of murder", but at the same time they don't worry about what actually happens in nature with those animals that are listed in the Red Book.
I really want to ask those who are "up there": how long will we have to endure the hypocritical "instructions" of foreign agents of influence? Or will we eventually live in accordance with common sense, traditions and culture of the peoples, which live in our country in order to further its prosperity?
