GFMC: Russia: US Funds Project for Protection of Forests, 2 March 2001
Russia: US Funds Project for Protection of Forests
2 March 2001
British Broadcasting Corporation, 2 March 2001
Khabarovsk — The US International Development Agency has allocated 20m dollars to finance the Forest Resources and Technologies project in Siberia and in the Russian Far East. American representatives stress “the importance of saving the forest treasures of Russia”, because “the health of people all over the world depends on the health of Russian forests”.
The five-year Forest Resources and Technologies project will concentrate on three principal areas. Primarily, on the prevention of forest fires, which are disastrous for Siberian and Far Eastern woods. The authors of the programme believe that the most important task is to work more actively with the local population, because at least 70-80 per cent of all the fires are caused by people living in the taiga regions.
The project also envisages measures to guarantee effective protection of the taiga from pests by means of the latest technologies, to render all the necessary aid to workers of the local wood-working industry and to procurers of non-timber forest products. Special attention will be given to the use of timber wastes by mini-power plants to generate electricity.
The implementation of this broad programme to protect and make effective use of forests will begin already this spring. The HQ of the project is in Khabarovsk. Its subsidiaries are being set up in the Maritime Territory of Russia, on Sakhalin, and also in Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk.
