WWF Russia released a report in English by Agnieszka Halemba and Brian Donahoe of the University of Leipzig and Max Planck Institute respectively on attitudes toward hunting and poaching in the Altai-Sayan region, including some material on attitude toward hunting of snow leopard. The report can be downloaded at http://www.wwf.ru/altay/eng/. The Altai press also reports that Kazakhstan and Russia are planning for a transboundary reserve in the Altai region and that a 2008 conference took place in Kazakhstan on the project. Additionally, WWF Russia is planning to initiate ecotours into snow leopard habitat along the Argut River. (Altaipress.ru Feb 13, 2009)
Thanks to SLN member Kathleen Braden for this update.
You may remember Sen. John McCain’s criticism of a study of grizzly bear DNA as wasteful spending. You may have wondered how the scientists got the DNA from the grizzlies. The answer is hair. The study, which McCain referred to during his run for president, was a large one, and it provided an estimate of the population of threatened grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, in and around GlacierNational Park. The researchers did not trap the bears or shoot them with tranquilizers. Instead, they prepared 100 55-gallon drums with a mixture of whole fish and cattle blood that was allowed to ferment until it had the aroma of grizzly bear candy. They built 2,400 hair corrals — 100 feet of barbed wire around five or six trees — and placed the fish and blood mix in the center. When bears went under the wire to check it out, they left hair behind. The team collected 34,000 hair samples in 14 weeks this way. The population estimate from the study, announced late last year, was 765, a figure 2.5 times the estimate based on sightings of females and cubs, the previously used method. “Hair snaring has given us a much more precise number,” said Katherine Kendall, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who designed and implemented the study. The results were just published in The Journal of Wildlife Management. It also gives a glimpse of a growing trend in wildlife biology toward research methods that are gentler — and cheaper — than the classic “capture, mark, recapture.” In that process researchers trap an animal, sometimes drug it and fasten on a radio collar or implant or attach a transmitter. Then, they follow the radio signal or catch the animal again to see where it goes. Such tools are powerful. Some high-tech collars beam an animal’s whereabouts to a satellite every 20 or 30 minutes, giving researchers unparalleled data on movement and habitat. But the techniques can create animals that are either “trap happy” or “trap shy.” There is concern that contacts with humans can reduce an animal’s wildness or lead to its death. Some research shows that bears may suffer long-term impacts from being drugged. In national parks, visitors often complain when they see a wild wolf or bear with a large radio collar around its neck. As a result, new noninvasive techniques are evolving, some that use hair and others that use animal scat. Such methods can be useful in countries that lack access to expensive technology. “You don’t need a vet, you don’t need an airplane, you don’t need training,” said Megan Parker, assistant director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s North America Program, based in Bozeman, Mont. In Bhutan, for example, biologists are gathering scat to study snow leopards, which are extraordinarily difficult to see, let alone trap. The problem is that there are a lot of different kinds of scat on the ground that cannot be differentiated visually. Out of 100 fecal samples gathered, often only two belong to a snow leopard. Lab testing to find those two samples is expensive. The scat is shipped to Bozeman, where Parker is training a dog, a Belgian Malinois named Pepin, to tell snow leopard scat from other kinds. Once Pepin’s sniff test weeds out the false samples, the right scat can be sent to a lab. Because of technological advances, a fragment of DNA found in scat can identify the species and sex of the animal that produced it. By collecting numerous samples across a territory, critical migration corridors can be identified as well as the abundance of a species. Stress hormones in the sample may be an indicator of the animal’s health. Diet and parasites can be assessed. “The genetic code is a mystery novel, a history book and a time log in a single hair,” said Michael Schwartz, a research ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont.L. Scott Mills, a professor of wildlife population ecology who teaches the techniques at the University of Montana in Missoula, said noninvasive methods “opened the door for abundance and density estimates that are very hard to do with live trapping.” “We can sample so many more animals,” Mills said. “With live trapping you might trap three animals in two years. With scats we can find 15 or 30.” Another noninvasive technique involves the use of still and video cameras triggered by heat and motion. Kerry Foresman teaches in the wildlife biology program at the University of Montana in Missoula, which emphasizes noninvasive techniques. He studies the fisher, wolverine, lynx and pine marten, all secretive carnivores, leaving a remote camera trained on the hanging hindquarter of a deer. Tracking plates are another tool. Animals are lured by bait across soot-covered metal plates and onto contact paper. “They leave behind exquisite images of their track s,” Foresman said. The setup costs $12.
By Patrice O’Shaughnessy of the New York Daily News
Tuesday, February 24th 2009, 1:24 AM
He’s an unassuming man, with gray hair, pale eyes and a measured voice. But if not for George Schaller, there’d probably be a lot less spectacular beauty in the world.
At 75, he has devoted half a century to saving endangered creatures and habitats all over the planet. It’s a never-ending task.
“You can never relax, and say something is okay,” he said, and noted a new threat.
The influx of Chinese workers to Africa, he said, has spawned a trade in lion bones, sent back to China for medicinal purposes.
“In Kenya, they put an insecticide in cow carcasses, and they kill off the whole pride,” he said. “There are only about 20,000 lions left in the world.”
Schaller is on the case.
And he says he’ll keep at his conservation efforts “for another 25 years.”
He visits animals in the wild, living for months or years at a time observing snow leopards in Pakistan, gorillas in Rwanda, lions in the Serengeti, pandas in China and the last Asiatic cheetahs in Iran to better learn how to protect them.
We caught up with him at the zoo last week, where he has been a researcher in animal behavior with the WCS since 1966, before he embarks on a round of trips to Iran, Brazil and Tibet.
Schaller was deemed “perhaps the greatest force for conservation in more than a century” by National Geographic magazine.
Discover magazine said he is considered the finest field biologist of our time.
Schaller has spent 50 years up close with exotic animals, tracking them, jotting notes in a small notebook and taking photographs, doing it the old-fashioned way.
He conducted a groundbreaking ecological study of mountain gorillas when he was 25, becoming the first scientist to live in their habitat. Now he is focusing on Marco Polo sheep, notable for their majestic spiral horns.
“Professors said gorillas were too dangerous, but I found them very congenial. They’re big, beautiful hairy relatives,” he said.
“I started out because I like to watch animals; that’s the fun part,” he said.
“Then, you have to worry about livelihood of communities” encroaching on the habitats.”
At 14, after World War II, he came to the U.S. from Berlin with his American mother, and retains a slight German accent. His first field trip was to the Arctic slope in Alaska.
“The oil companies wanted to drill. Luckily, they didn’t,” he said. As of 2006, “the place is still beautiful .. . no roads, lots of caribou and grizzly bears.”
He and his wife, Kay, “the perfect co-worker,” raised two sons in exotic locales. She still accompanies him on some trips.
“The most wonderful place is Serengeti and Tanzania,” he said. “You literally see a million animals spread before you.”
He writes even more than he travels. Schaller has penned seven books and scores of articles with titles like, “Courtship Behavior of the Wild Goat,” and “Effects of a Snowstorm on Tibetan Antelope.”
It’s a commemoration of his years with the WCS, celebrating his contribution to science. A panel of international conservationists will examine the status of key species and landscapes that Schaller has brought to the world’s attention.
Is he excited about the symposium? He looked a little uncomfortable, and said, “Why do you think I am always overseas?”
Schaller is passionate, though, about his prized project, first conceived in the 1980s.
He envisions the PamirInternationalPeacePark, at the nexus of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and Tajikistan. It will be a refuge for Marco Polo sheep.
“We had a meeting of all four countries,” he said.
He has never let war, strife, the political squabbles of humans or borders stop him.
As he wrote in one of his books, “I live in a geography of dreams. …”
On 13 February 2008, Steve Winter won first prize in the Nature Stories category of the 52nd annual World Press Photo Contest for his June 2008 NG article and photographs, “Snow Leopards: Out of the Shadows”.
About the contest:
The annual World Press Photo contest is at the core of the organization’s activities. It offers an overview of how press photographers tackle their work worldwide and how the press gives us the news, bringing together pictures from all parts of the globe to reflect trends and developments in photojournalism.
How to Enter
The contest is open to all professional press photographers. There is no entry fee.
Not only photographers, but photo agencies, newspapers and magazines from anywhere in the world are invited to submit their best news-related pictures of the previous year. Both single images and photo stories are eligible. The results are published on this website. Entry forms for the contest come out in October. To enter the 2009 contest click here.
Judging & Results
Judging takes place at the beginning of February each year. The contest jury comprises thirteen picture editors, photographers and representatives of press agencies from different parts of the world, with widely divergent backgrounds.
This brings to the process a breadth of experience, a variety of perception, and a contrast in viewpoint that keeps judging dynamic and bolsters objectivity. The jury acts independently of World Press Photo, and the organization has no influence on its decisions.
Winners are announced at a press conference in the second week of February. Prizewinning photographers are invited to receive their awards at the annual Awards Days in Amsterdam at the end of April.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
By our correspondent
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=161144
Karachi
The third day of the Kara Film Festival saw a flurry of activity with a screening of 11 films, seven short ones, two documentaries, and two feature films.
Within the short films section was the 48-minute local film, “Gurmukh Singh ki Wasiyat” (Gurmukh Sigh’s Will). Based on a short story by Saadat Hasan Minto, written and directed by Sharjeel Baloch, the story is set in Amritsar during Partition, and depicts the accompanying riots.
The film is centred around the family of a retired Muslim judge, Mian Saheb. Muslim families of the area migrate to Pakistan or leave to seek refuge, and Mian Saheb has great trust in his dear friend, Gurmukh Singh, a revered area elder.
While Gurmukh Singh’s son honours his father’s will to bring sweet vermicelli on Eid to the Muslim household, he remains powerless to prevent his peers from burning and looting.
Afterwards, Sharjeel thanked his crew and the actors who put in a lot of effort, shooting the film within five days at Kotri. He was thankful to the people of Kotri who welcomed the crew warmly in to their homes, many of which last from the pre-Partition era, thus giving an air of authenticity to the scenes and bringing alive the past.
The second documentary, a BBC production for their Planet Earth series, was about snow leopards in Chitral, NWFP. The unique aspect of this production is the visual documentation of the behaviour of the snow leopards on the steep mountains. Narrated by renowned wildlife documentary maker, Sir David Attenborough, the celestial beauty of snow-decked valleys, and the engaging delivery of Sir Attenborough drew the audience’s rapt attention.
Nisar Malik, veteran journalist and filmmaker, who was commissioned to seek out and film the rare beast, was also present at Friday’s screening. He said that within four years of shooting, they saw only four snow leopards.
Responding to a question about whether the documentary might further endanger the animal for hunters and poachers, Malik said that during their four years, they exposed numerous instances of trophy poaching and illegal hunting in the land of the Markhor. The authorities, however, turned a blind eye, he said.
Unfortunately, the only way Pakistanis will be able to see the documentary is either on BBC or on the Indian Discovery channel in Hindi, as none of the channels in Pakistan was willing to screen it, not even PTV.
ENVIRONMENT-INDIA:Wildlife – Kashmir‘s Other Conflict By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, Feb 5 (IPS) – Decades of separatist militancy in Indian Kashmir and the massive response to it by the armed forces have taken a toll on human life. But, what is less known is the fact that this and other human activity have exacerbated dangers posed to the state’s wildlife.
“Human-animal conflicts have assumed alarming proportions in the region,’’ Asghar Inayati, regional wildlife warden, told IPS.
“Every now and then we receive reports of attacks by wild animals causing death, injuries (sometimes serious) to human beings and livestock. Over the last three years 49 people and 404 animals have died in these conflicts,” Inayati said.
But, in that period, more than 200 wild animals were also rescued and released into the wild by staff of the wildlife department who intervened in potential conflict situations.
“Animals are often get killed, captured or are harmed in retaliation and these conflicts are a major threat to the continued survival of many species,” A. K. Srivastava, chief wildlife warden of the region, reported to the government recently.
In the winter of 2006 a frenzied mob burnt a bear to death in a hamlet of Kashmir‘s Tral township. Over the last few years there have been many such incidents where people have tried to capture the animals or kill them.
This despite the fact that killing the Asian black bear, which has been declared an endangered species under the Indian Wildlife Act, carries a prison sentence of 2-6 years.
Srivastava believes that the steadily decreasing forest cover, a result of legal and illegal logging operations and human encroachments into the forest, is a direct cause for increasing encounters between humans and animals.
Since the start of the armed insurgency in Kashmir in 1989, the central government has massively boosted the presence of army and paramilitary forces which are mostly deployed in the forest areas, particularly along the fenced Line of Control (LoC) that divides Indian Kashmir from the Pakistan-administered part of the territory.
“The conflict between the military and the militants in Kashmir is indirectly contributing to the increase in the number of man-animal conflicts,’’ a forest official who cannot be identified because of briefing rules told IPS.
“Due to human movement in the forests and the fencing of the LoC, the natural habitat of the wild animals has got disturbed; this is one of the reasons that they stray into human settlements,’’ he said.
Unofficial figures put the number of army and paramilitary troops deployed in the state at around one million, but the government disputes this figure saying it is “far smaller than that’’.
The army and paramilitary have set up camps in the forest areas where they believe militants often take refuge. “Presently there are over 671 security camps in Kashmir which occupy more than 90,000 acres of land,” says rights activist Gautam Navlakha.
Following a ceasefire agreement with Pakistan in 2003, India erected a patrolled, security fence along the 742-km-long LoC.
India accuses Pakistan of training Kashmiri militants on its side of the LoC and pushing them into Indian Kashmir. “The fence may have stopped the militants from crossing over to this side of LoC, but it has had an impact on the natural habitat of wild animals in the process,” says the forest official.
“There are several other factors also responsible for increasing incidents of conflict between wild animals and humans. These include shrinkage of habitat due to expanding human population, livestock and developmental activities, changes in the land-use pattern, decline in the natural prey base, climate change and urbanisation,” says Abdul Rouf Zargar, a wildlife warden.
According to Zargar, wild animals endangered by conflict with humans include the Asiatic Black Bear, Common Leopard, Rhesus Monkey and Langur.
Kashmir is home to several animal species that are listed as endangered like the Kashmiri red stag called ‘Hangul’ and the Snow Leopard (also called ounce). Hanguls were once a major attraction in the mountain-ringed forests of Dachigam near Srinagar, summer capital of Kashmir.
The Hangul is the only surviving sub-species of the red deer family in the world, and after its population declined to about 150, the wildlife department began, this year, a programme of captive breeding to save it from extinction.
Efforts by the wildlife department to save the Snow Leopard, listed as ‘endangered’ in the IUCN (International Conservation Union) red list of threatened animals, include helping sheep and goat farmers to build better barricades and shelters for livestock.
While the Snow Leopard rarely attacks humans, its predatory habits lead them into livestock shelters, entering through ventilators or broken doors and windows. Here they are often trapped and killed.
Wildlife authorities have issued advisories to the citizens to try and minimise chances of conflict with the wild animals and have supplemented it with a number of guidelines for them to follow.
“We cannot stop these incidents entirely, but we are making efforts to minimise them,” says Inayati. “We have taken a number of measures like the constitution of coordination committees, comprehensive management plan for handling the conflicts, and research studies on conflicts and animals involved.”
Recently, the wildlife department began a programme of studying the Asiatic Black Bear’s home ranges, habitat use, breeding nature and behavioural traits. “We fixed radio collars around the neck of the bears and tracked theri movements,‘’ says Intisar Suhail, wildlife warden in central Kashmir.
“We captured one aggressive bear a couple of months ago and kept it under semi-captivity at DachigamNational Park. We released it to study its behavioural pattern of this animal using the radio collar and then recaptured it when it started attacking humans again,” Suhail told IPS.
“Now we will subject him to the ‘aversion technique’ by which animals are subjected to unpleasant stimulus so that it avoids human populations and stays in the forest areas,’’ he said.
Love is blind, and Shafqat Hussain GRD ‘08 learned this the hard way. Despite having devoted his professional life to his passion for saving snow leopards, the closest he has come to one is the zoo gift store.
Yesterday, Hussain, a doctoral student in anthropology and the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, was officially named one of 10 National Geographic Emerging Explorers for 2009 for his work with snow leopards in northern Pakistan. The $10,000 research grant, which recognizes adventurers for their contributions to world knowledge, will allow Hussain to continue to work with local communities to ensure the survival of this endangered species.
Hussain first appeared on the international radar when he pioneered Project Snow Leopard in 1998, a self-funding livestock insurance scheme that offers Pakistani villagers compensation for any livestock they lose to snow leopards. But some environmentalists remain unconvinced that insurance is the only way to save the majestic cat.
“Our program is still expanding,” Hussain said in an interview with the News. “We don’t have any grand visions or plans. We just somehow want to see that large conservation projects that are funded by international agencies can see that the approach of separating human society from the environment is not the answer.”
Hussain dreamt up Project Snow Leopard after witnessing the threat snow leopard populations pose to local villages in the Skoyo and Basha valleys of north Pakistan. The cats hunt the villagers’ livestock — their only source of income. The villagers, in return, hunt the cats to protect their livelihood, creating a vicious circle of predation.
The idea has taken off since it was put into effect in Pakistan and serves as a model for similar projects in India, China and Nepal, Hussain said.
“Shafqat Hussain’s Project Snow Leopard is an example of innovative thinking and the ability to balance the needs of individuals, communities and the environment,” said Cheryl Zook, National Geographic’s manager of Emerging Explorers and Special Projects. “It is an example of forward-thinking, holistic conservation work.”
But Hussain is not your average conservationist. With an undergraduate degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in economics, a master’s in biology — and soon enough, a Ph.D. in anthropology — the son of a Pakistani civil servant has sampled a wide range of disciplines. His heart, though, has remained with the imposing mountain landscape he recalls admiring in his childhood.
“When I was young I used to go to the hills,” Hussain said. “I found out there were these amazing mountains in the north, and I knew that I wanted to go back and work there.”
His own fascination with nature convinced him that the solution to problems of conservation was not to artificially separate humans from their natural surroundings.
This view has shaped his outlook on national parks, which he sees as sources of historical conflict and as an ineffective means of preserving nature.
“The whole idea of the national park is enshrined in this philosophy that there is wilderness and pristine nature and that it’s timeless,” he said. “But historical records show that there is no part of the world that hasn’t been touched by humans.”
But Todd Remaley, chief ranger with the Appalachian Trail, argues that Hussain’s idea — that nature and humans should coexist naturally — is not in opposition to the thinking behind a national park.
While he acknowledged that there is no one right way to tackle all problems of conservation, Remaley remained doubtful that programs like Project Snow Leopard could be entirely effective without the environmental preservation that the national park framework provides.
“On the surface it sounds like he’s found a solution, but what is he doing to preserve the habitat?” Remaley said. “One of the biggest problems facing endangered species today is the destruction of their habitats.”
But Hussain argues that such thinking — conceiving of an animal’s habitat as wilderness — represents a “typically first world view of nature conservation.”
“A habitat is separate from human society,” he said. “Humans have been part of the same habitat for millions of years, so clearly it is not their presence, but their behavior and
practices that are [at fault]. And that is what we are trying to address.”
Only two sightings of snow leopards have taken place in the past fifty years.
Srinagar, Jan 27: Following heavy snowfall in the upper reaches of Kashmir, the wild animals are moving to the plains, leading to incidents of man-animal conflict. In one recent instance, a leopard was killed by people after sighting it in a village in Kashmir.A police official said that a villager was injured when a wild leopard attacked him near his residence at Loridora, Chandoosa in North Kashmir. “As people came to know about the incident, they chased the animal and hurling stones and bricks at it. Later, they managed to catch the leopard and killed it,” the official said.
A few weeks back, another leopard was killed in the same manner by villagers in Kashmir.
The man-animal conflicts are increasing as the upper reaches and mountains across Kashmir have witnessed heavy snowfall, forcing the wild animals to move towards human habitations. “Leopards, bears and their cubs, foxes and jackals have been seen roaming near human habitations near the forest area in Kashmir and scores of people have been killed in the wild animal attacks. In retaliatory action, some animals have also been killed,” an official from the Wild Life Department said.
He said that the people living close to forest area have been advised to avoid coming out in the open after dark as the movement of wild animals in human habitations will not cease unless the snow melts in the upper reaches.
23 January 2009
By Anna Malpas / Staff Writer Moscow Times
When a helicopter carrying senior government officials crashed into a
remote Altai mountainside earlier this month, killing several
passengers, the accident appeared to be nothing more than a tragic
loss of life.
But photographs snapped at the crash site have thrown a spotlight on
what conservationists say is a disturbingly popular pastime among the
country’s political and business elite: the expensive sport of
poaching from helicopters.
One photograph published on an Altai region web site shows the
carcasses of endangered argali sheep among the wreckage of the Mi-171
helicopter that crashed Jan. 9. One of the sheep has a knife sticking
out of its haunches.
The wild sheep is one of Russia‘s rarest animals, and hunting it is
punishable by up to two years in prison. The photograph prompted
ecologists to press prosecutors to investigate whether the officials
were hunting illegally when their helicopter went down.
Among the seven federal, regional and local officials killed in the
crash was Viktor Kaimin, the Altai republic’s top official charged
with protecting the region’s wildlife and whose committee was
responsible for issuing hunting licenses.
Regional prosecutors say no formal investigation has been opened into
whether the officials were engaging in illegal hunting, though
regional environmental officials said they would push for a probe
into the circumstances of the incident, which some ecologists and
political commentators have dubbed “Altaigate.”
Conservationists say it is an open secret that officials come to
Altai for hunting trips in which they simply shoot at animals from
hovering helicopters, despite a ban on the practice.
With its remote mountains, the pristine Gorny Altai region is popular
with hunters, and hunting is legal in some areas for Siberian goat
and red deer.
“Over the last decade, Altai has become a place where helicopter
hunting has become rather common,” said Alexei Vaisman, head of WWF-
Russia’s anti-animal trafficking program.
The officials in the fatal expedition had hunting licences for
Siberian goats and red deer, Yelena Kobzeva, a spokeswoman for the
Altai government, told Interfax. The photographs published on the
AltaPress.ru web site, however, clearly show animals with round
curved horns, while Siberian goats have tall, slightly curved horns.
Vaisman, whose organization has been joined by Greenpeace and other
environmental groups in calling for an investigation, said WWF-Russia
does not “want anyone’s blood.”
“We don’t want anyone to be imprisoned,” Vaisman said. “The main aim
of our actions is to make a court give an official legal assessment
of what happened.”
Also killed in the crash were Alexander Kosopkin, the Kremlin’s envoy
to the State Duma, and Sergei Livishin, a senior member of the
presidential administration.
Survivors included Anatoly Bannykh, deputy head of the Altai Republic‘s administration, and Nikolai Kopranov, an adviser to the
Duma’s Economic Policy Committee.
Gorny Altai attracts “VIP hunters,” said Oleg Mitvol, the outspoken
deputy head of Federal Inspection Service for Natural Resources Use.
“There are special lodges that can only be reached by helicopter,”
Mitvol said. “They are luxurious. Just imagine how much it costs to
stay there.”
Environmentalists say helicopter hunting trips cannot be organized
without the knowledge and support of local officials.
It’s “rather common” for regional officials to treat federal
officials to free hunting trips, Vaisman said. “It’s not a bribe,
it’s to make good relations, to get additional money to the region
from the federal center,” he said.
Low-level officials are often involved in organizing the trips too.
State game wardens receive “almost negligible” salaries of around
1,000 rubles ($32) per month, Vaisman said.
Such helicopter hunting trips are organized in Kamchatka, Magadan, Sakhalin and Primorye regions, Vaisman said. “It’s popular among high-
level officials and so-called New Russians, who think they are above
the law,” he said.
The targets can be mountain sheep, snow sheep, mountain goats, bears
or moose, Vaisman said. “They shoot directly from the helicopter and
then land to pick up any trophies,” he said.
Kobzeva, the AltaiRepublic administration spokeswoman, told The
Moscow Times by telephone that the officials who crashed earlier this
month were on a private trip and that no funds from the regional
budget were used to finance it. The administration has no information
on who ordered and paid for the trip, Kobzeva said.
Helicopter hunting trips even take place in nature reserves, said
Mikhail Paltsyn, a scientist with a UN-sponsored environmental
program called Biodiversity Conservation in the Russian Portion of
the Altai-Sayan Ecoregion.
“Helicopter hunts take place regularly for Siberian goats and red
deer in the ArgutRiver valley, in Shavlinsky nature reserve, where
hunting is completely banned,” Paltsyn said in e-mailed comments. “On
practically all our expeditions to the ArgutRiver valley, we see
hunting helicopters and find traces of such hunting. Local residents
say that helicopters with hunters come to these places every month.”
Last February, conservationists spotted a helicopter on two
consecutive days circling and apparently firing at Siberian goats and red deer. They wrote down the number and contacted game wardens and
police. “The people responsible were never found,” Paltsyn said. “It
looks like the servants of the people were hunting again.”
Hiring a helicopter costs tens of thousands of rubles per hour, said
Anatoly Mozharov, the editor of Safari magazine for hunters. Mozharov
stressed, however, that legitimate hunters use helicopters to fly to
far-flung areas and then hunt from the ground.
Killing a protected animal is a crime in Russia punishable by up to
two years. Relatively few poachers are ever convicted, however,
officials and environmentalists said.
“Very few investigations are ever opened regarding ecological
crimes,” Mitvol said. “Last year, practically none were opened.
Unfortunately, many VIP hunters take into account that no criminal
investigation will ever be opened against them.”
A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office said the office had
no available data on the number of illegal hunting cases investigated
last year or the number of people convicted of poaching.
Convictions are rare in such cases because illegal hunting is “very,
very difficult to prove,” said Alexander Bondarev, head of the
Biodiversity Conservation in the Russian Portion of the Altai-Sayan
Ecoregion.
“Some people see a helicopter in the mountains, but it’s not possible
to determine which animal was shot,” he said.
In Gorny Altai, hunters often receive permission to shoot Siberian
goats — whose territory is close to that of the endangered argali
sheep, Bondarev said. The hunters can therefore claim that they are
shooting at the goats, not the wild sheep.
“The only possibility is to find the hunter near the animal,”
Bondarev said. “But it’s very difficult to prove that he killed this
animal.”
Bondarev’s organization was one of the first to issue a statement
identifying the animals in the photograph as argali sheep. The
organization focuses on the conservation of argali and the snow
leopard, both of which are listed as endangered in Russia.
The argali sheep is one of the region’s rarest species, and its
population in Russia numbers only a few hundred.
The argali are the largest wild sheep in the world. Their large,
curly horns, weighing around 50 kilograms, are prized as trophies.
The area where the helicopter crashed is home to the largest group of
argali sheep in Russia. Since they migrate between Mongolia and Russia, it is difficult to say how many sheep remain. In winter it
could be 100-150, while in summer they number up to 400, Paltsyn said.
“The greatest threat for argali is poaching, including hunting by
some local residents and hunting for pleasure and trophies by
visiting hunters,” Paltsyn said.
It is unclear how many argali are killed illegally each year in Russia, Bondarev said. He estimated that around six of the animals
are poached annually.
Kaimin, the environmental official killed in the crash, was embroiled
in a scandal in 2003 after he was purportedly seen hunting argali
sheep. AltaiRepublic lawmakers appealed to prosecutors to
investigate the incident, though the case was later dropped.
A spokesman for the Altai newspaper that reported on the story,
Postskriptum, said in a telephone interview that the case was dropped
because it rested exclusively on statements from witnesses.
Attempts to reach the AltaiRepublic‘s committee for the protection,
use and reproduction of the animal world — which Kaimin headed up
before his death — were unsuccessful. The committee had only five
members, of whom only one was an inspector, Paltsyn said. Until
recently, it had no transport, funds for raids or inspector team, he
said.
“If the fact of poaching is confirmed, then of course this
organization is just ineffective,” said Svetlana Shchegrina, head of
environmental education at the Altai regional nature reserve, which
also has a population of argali sheep. “It’s a terrible case.”
