Russian Disarray
Resource exploitation. Rapid exploitation of Russian forests in the post-Soviet era has led to major debate among scientists and foresters in Russia. Honored Russian academicians — the highest scientific rank in Russia — published an open letter to Russian society in the Lesnaya Gazeta on March 20. The letter took issue with the current implementation of the new Forestry Code, which was enacted three years ago despite the disapproval of most highly qualified forestry scientists, ecologists and the public. According to Academician N.A. Moiseyev in his acute review of state-of-the-art Russian forest management in the journal Lesnoye Khozyaystvo, Russia, like no other country, has lived through many different reforms including two opposite revolutionary changes: socialism and capitalism. Moiseyev cites famous Russian forester Professor M.M. Orlov: "Nothing is as detrimental in forest management as tossing to and fro, constant changes of direction that leads to trampling on one and the same spot."
A whole series of articles describing current forestry issues in Russia also was published in Lesnoye Kohozyaystvo. Academician A.I. Pisarenko and Dr. V.V. Strakhov describe the situation where state-supported forest protection is almost dismissed — the forest has become an orphan. Currently, the state cannot legally derive profit from owning the land, such as by selling timber to fund forest management, but it can sell the land to private parties. As a result, large forest areas are being sold non-competitively for use as private hunting preserves, and private companies are harvesting large areas without returning profits or reinvesting in the land or management of the forests. In the absence of formal regulation, Russia has an extremely low efficiency in the use of forest resources: today only 28% (165 million square meters) of the logged timber volume (609 million square meters) is actually used. The cut (but unused) timber volume has led to a fuels buildup that is feeding large fires. Recent satellite images reveal that most large fires now occur in the band where most logging occurs.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy changed from socialism to capitalism in its worst form — oligarchy. Wild economic freedom led to a collapse of effective forest management, extending to fire management. At present, no one doubts that Russian forest management is experiencing an organized manmade disaster. The forest sector has never seen such a strategic and systemic collapse. In some ways, the current situation in Russia parallels that of the United States and Canada 100 years ago. Significant advances in natural resource science, including wildland fire science, likely will be stymied until the Russian people send a clear message to their government to end privatization and exploitation and begin sustainable management.
At present, Russia has all the necessary prerequisites for development of a fully functional Russian fire behavior prediction system. The Sukachev Institute of Forest, SB RAS, which has long been considered the center of Russian fire science, has a cadre of highly trained and qualified fire scientists, a good foundation of relevant fundamental and applied vegetation and fire science knowledge, and proficient computer specialists. While the institute has significant computer technology, remote-sensing capabilities and GIS capabilities, it lags behind what is needed for the national mapping of fuels and vegetation and the implementation of fire management decision support systems. It is unlikely that rapid progress can be made until the larger forest management issues facing Russian society are resolved and a clear direction and stable funding for fire research and management are established.
Tatiana M. Sofronova is an assistant professor at the Astafiev's Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University in Siberia, Russia, specializing in ecology and English, and a scientific researcher at the Sukachev Institute of Forest in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Her research interests include fire danger, fire behavior and fire effects prediction, vegetation fuel mapping, terminology, translation and interpreting. Sofronova is a prospective Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland. She can be reached at tmsofronova@gmail.com.
Prof. Alexandra V. Volokitina is a leading scientific researcher at the Forest Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, specializing in forest fire ecology, vegetation fuel classification, mapping and combustion. She is an author and co-author of 250 publications, including seven monographs and three educational books. Volokitina received scientific training on forest fire behavior prediction at the University of Alberta in 1995 and at the Woods Hole Research Center in 1998. She can be reached at volokit@ksc.krasn.ru.
Prof. Mark A. Sofronov is a leading scientific researcher at the Forest Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, specializing in forest fire ecology, pyrological partitioning, fire danger rating and empirical fire growth modeling. He is an author and co-author of more than 250 publications, including nine monographs and three books. He can be reached at msofronov@ksc.krasn.ru.
The authors would like to thank Dr. Kevin C. Ryan, research fire ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Science Laboratory, for assistance in editing this article and for his valuable comments.
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