The end of the wilderness: bears starve as poachers pillage Russia's wealth of salmon - Guardian

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

The end of the wilderness: bears starve as poachers pillage Russia's wealth of salmon

Remote Kamchatka faces ecological meltdown as fish
stocks are obliterated

Luke Harding in Ust-Bolsheretsk, Kamchatka
Friday June 22, 2007
The Guardian

-snip-

Kamchatka is home to a quarter of the world's salmon. Every July and
August millions of the fish struggle up its rivers and lakes to spawn.
But, increasingly, most of them don't make it.

"We catch so many fish that the different salmon species no longer return.
Once we've exhausted one species we move on to the next," Alexander
said, offering me a spoonful of orange salmon caviar and a cup of tea.

Poaching in Kamchatka is on such a large scale that, like the sturgeon,
the Pacific salmon is at risk of disappearing altogether. The 750-mile
peninsula is one of the world's last truly great wildernesses, home to the
rare Steller's sea eagle, puffins and brown bears, who roam around its
geysers and snow-covered calderas, or collapsed volcanos. Kamchatka
has more than 300 volcanoes, 29 still smoulderingly active.

As the main food source here rapidly disappears, however, conservationists
fear that Kamchatka is on the brink of ecological meltdown. Laura Williams,
director of WWF's Kamchatka office, said: "When you fly over Kamchatka
you are in awe of the wilderness below you. There are no roads and no
settlements. I think right now the threats are relatively localised - with
the exception of salmon, which is very widely overfished."

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2108850,00.html