Russia (bbabo.net), - Almost 800 kilograms of fish listed in the Red Book - Siberian sturgeon and muksun - were seized from poachers in the waters of the Ob Bay in Yamal. Damage to nature amounted to 2.7 million rubles.
At the same time, an underground workshop for the processing of king crab, obtained by poachers, was closed in Murmansk. Briquettes with meat for 110 kilograms and 100 sets of limbs were arrested. These summaries are only a few days old. Dozens of criminal cases are opened daily in the country. There are villages where hereditary "black hunters and fishermen" live. Damage from poachers, according to the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, exceeds 20 billion rubles a year.
One reason is that there is no one to guard the hunting grounds. Take the Sverdlovsk region as an example: 18 million hectares of forest are guarded by 38 inspectors instead of 224 according to the standards. That is, each has an area of a state like Brunei, or half of Cyprus. "I've been hunting for more than 15 years, I've only met a huntsman once," poacher Nikolai from the Sverdlovsk region told me frankly. And inspectors, it seems, never. It is difficult to fill their staff. Wages are low all over the country. In the Sverdlovsk region, for example, inspectors receive 30-35 thousand rubles. By the way, this is one of the five regions of the country, where they recently decided to arm them with carbines.
“Three years ago, a poacher killed one of our best employees when he tried to find out where he got fish on an industrial scale,” says Alexander Kuznetsov, head of the regional department for the protection, control and regulation of wildlife in the Sverdlovsk region. “A year later, drunken poachers in they opened fire on SOBR soldiers in the forest, burned the car of hunting inspectors. We clearly understood that only a man with a weapon can stop lawless people in the forest."
Who is a poacher today - a poor villager who goes to hunt in the forest to feed his family, or a snickering businessman, or an official who goes to the forest, like a gentleman, for a dose of adrenaline? As Alexander Kuznetsov says, neither one nor the other. The average poacher is a middle peasant firmly standing on his feet, who has a good car, a snowmobile, a weapon with optics and night vision devices. He is impudent, knows perfectly well why he goes into the forest. Prey, meat or fish, he sells himself, or a group acts for this.
Another face of them - "gray" hunters. Those who receive a license to harvest one number of animals, but kill many times more. This is essentially Nikolai. But he doesn’t consider himself a poacher: “I just buy the cheapest ticket for a bird. It costs 650 rubles. thousand, for an elk - 70. So, how much meat can be bought with this money! And a roe deer has nothing to eat, it will be cut into a bucketful of meat.
In each region, poachers have their own animals for prey. If in the Urals it is elk, roe deer, wild boar, sable, then in Primorye, as the doctor of biological sciences, professor at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution named after A. A.N. Severtsov RAS Leonid Baskin, catastrophic situation with musk deer. It is exterminated because of the musk that the abdominal gland produces. It has historically been used in oriental medicine as a sexual stimulant.
"Proving the fact of poaching is almost impossible: they take only a small gland with musk. You can take it out in your pocket, no one will check everyone who comes out of the forest," says Leonid Baskin.
Of course, the punishment for illegal production of animals is rather big. In the Middle Urals, 1.5 million rubles will have to be paid for one killed elk. There is also a penalty of up to two years in prison. The point is small - poachers must be caught. Are they afraid of the same rangers? “Yes, not really,” Nikolai is sure. “They have been ‘vas-vas’ with them for a long time, that is, in collusion. They kill the elk, share with the rangers. They call, they say, come there. There are few principled among rangers. But I understand them : the salary is low...
Back to news | In the Volgograd region, a gang of sturgeon poachers was sent to prison. Six of its members sold fish and caviar. The main sales points were located in Moscow and the Moscow region, where the delicacy was delivered by cars with caches.The price per liter of caviar was 35-45 thousand rubles. More than 100 liters were confiscated from illegal circulation, as well as 52 million rubles. The court sentenced the gang members to imprisonment for a term of two and a half to five and a half years in a penal colony of general and strict regime. They must pay 7.5 million rubles to the state revenue. In the Khabarovsk Territory, an indictment was approved in the case of two poachers who hunted sturgeon. They butchered the fish on the shore and removed the caviar. Some of the carcasses were thrown away. The accomplices processed, salted and packaged the caviar in 353 plastic containers and, along with parts of the kaluga, were illegally stored for sale. However, the buyers did not get the delicacies - they were confiscated by the police. The damage to the state is estimated at over 44 million rubles. The criminal case was approved by the prosecutor and sent to the court.
Prepared by Roman Merzlyakov, Julia Gardner
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