VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, May 15, 2002, (ENS) – Hundreds of forest fires have swept over more than 135,000 acres in the Russian Far East this week, destroying trees and threatening the homes of endangered animals such as Amur tigers and Siberian leopards.

Red dots are fires in the Russian Far East today. (Satellite image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC)

In response to the fires, authorities have had to rush nearly 2,000 firefighters, paratroopers and civilians along with 363 fire vehicles to the many fire sites.

In addition, railway authorities have dispatched 30 firefighting trains and 20 fire trucks to put out fires along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, said Valery Shigaryov, head of the Railway Ministry's troop division in the Far East.

Alexander Zhuravlyev, Far East emergency situations duty officer said, "The toughest situation is in the Amur region, where forest over an area of 104,263 acres is burning, in Khabarovsk 17,736 acres are affected, in Sakhalin 3,622 acres, in Primorye 2,183 acres."

Every year dry weather creates ideal conditions for widespread fires in the forested areas, and this year has been particularly dry. The continuous practice of illegal logging has served to amass fuel as loggers move the valuable timber out, leaving butts and limbs scattered on the ground.

Most Amur leopards today live far from their native territory in zoos and wildlife parks, like this one at The Wildlife Park at Cricket St. Thomas, UK (Photo courtesy TWP)

Incusions of fire into the forests eliminate more of the animals' habitat, and the infestations of bugs into the weakened boreal forest has had the effect of reducing the area left for these endangered animals to critical levels.

Summer months attract campers to the region. Add the dry residual limbs left over from indiscriminate logging, and there is a volatile combination. Each year authorities make televised appeals asking people to take care when picnicking or camping in forested areas. This year, the authorities are limiting public access to forests and setting up police posts at popular picnic spots.

For several years, forestry authorities have complained that their meager budgets make it impossible to be effective in preventing or fighting fires that destroy large areas of forest. Revenue from illegal logging does not find its way into government budgets, but remains in the pockets of logging pirates.

Authorities in Russia and the United States are working together to defeat the annual firestorms. Since 1997, there has been a partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Federal Forest Service of Russia to create a GIS mapping analysis of the entire area.

Russian forest fire, March 2000 (Photo credit unknown)

Creating satellite generated maps will help the Russian authorities to pinpoint illegal harvesting. It will give them a database of weather history, endangered species habitat, mature stands of trees and road incursions. The pilot forest management program will provide the information necessary to allow a rotational harvest so that Russian forests remain healthy and more resistant to insect infestations.

The methods of direct the GIS implementation are now being refined in Bolshaya Murta, a Russian research institute, in cooperation with the joint Russian-American project on sustainable boreal forest management.

The institute is creating GIS maps that include general geographic and thematic maps, vegetation maps, a soil maps, a map of ecological zones, forest inventories, research study results, and current forest inspection materials, such as borings and ring count samples from across the entire area.

The current state of the forests, their ecological role and statistical analysis of stand inventory and biological characteristics is being plotted in digital form. The team has succeeded in identifying zones ideal for Siberian moth outbreaks and pinpointed high fuel areas.

The new maps, combined with current weather forecasts, will allow the project participants to develop operational forest fire danger maps to be used by fire protection personnel on future ground patrols.

In the coming years, when the project is complete, the participating agencies hope that an ecologically sound forest practice regimen can be implemented and the recurring, devastating fires in the Russian Far East can be avoided.