Kamchatka Governor Authorizes Kol River Salmon Refuge

PORTLAND, Oregon, May 13, 2004 (ENS) - Governor Mikhail Mashkovtsev of the Kamchatka Oblast Administration has signed a decree authorizing a 544,000 acre, headwaters-to-ocean, salmon refuge located along the southwest side of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in cooperation with an Oregon conservation organization. Russia’s 1,000 mile long Kamchatka Peninsula produces up to one-quarter of all wild Pacific salmon and contains a series of rivers that hosts the greatest diversity of salmonid fish on Earth.

The territory of the Kol River Salmon Refuge includes no human settlements and is extremely productive, with annual runs of over five million fish.

“The Kol may be the first whole-river refuge created specifically to protect wild salmon and their environment,” said Wild Salmon Center President Guido Rahr from the organization's home base in Portland, Oregon.

Salmon on the Utkholok River, Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Russia, 2001 (Photo by Guido Rahr courtesy Wild Salmon Center)

Working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Wild Salmon Center identified the Kol River Salmon Refuge as significant because it contains all six native Pacific salmon species: chinook, coho, sockeye, chum, pink, and Asian masu salmon, as well as steelhead, rainbow trout, Dolly Varden char, and white-spotted char.

“This refuge will serve as the centerpiece to an international, cooperative, conservation effort between the Wild Salmon Center, the Kamchatka Wild Fishes and Biodiversity Foundation, the UNDP, Moscow State University and our other Russian partners. We’ve been working together for over five years to save this amazing place,” Rahr said.

Besides salmon, the refuge will safeguard Kamchatka brown bears, snow sheep, Steller’s sea eagles, vast tracts of waterfowl habitat, and dozens of other species that rely on an ecosystem supported by the salmon lifecycle.

Kamchatka is inhabited by one of only two populations of steelhead, Onchorynchus mykiss, in Russia, a species that is listed under Russia’s Red Book of Endangered Species.

“Because of its pristine condition and salmonid biodiversity, the Kol River Salmon Zakaznik [refuge] promises to be a world class research site,” said Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, executive director of the Wild Fishes and Biodiversity Foundation.

Kol River Biostation, staffed by scientists from Wild Salmon Center, Moscow State University, and Flathead Lake Biological Station, University of Montana (Photo courtesy Wild Salmon Center)

Working with the Wild Salmon Center and scientific organizations, the Wild Fishes and Biodiversity Foundation will prepare a master plan for operation of the refuge by the end of 2005.

This will require an inventory of species, discussions with local inhabitants of the surrounding area about traditional uses of the refuge, and a plan for the administration and protection of the refuge, said Zvyagintsev.

The Wild Salmon Center and the Wild Fishes Biodiversity Foundation have hosted scientists and researchers at the Kol River Biostation, located within the Kol River Salmon Refuge, since 2002.

The biostation serves as a “base camp” for international researchers specializing in salmonid ecosystems. It operates under a 49 year lease issued by the Russian government and will become an integral part of the greater Kol River Salmon Refuge.

Kamchatka was protected from outside development until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990, says the Wild Salmon Center. Recently, Russia has begun to reach out to both national and international groups to help develop the region’s gold, platinum, oil, coal and natural gas deposits.

West-central Kamchatka, where the highest diversity of salmonid fish occurs, is under immediate threat from natural gas, coal and offshore oil development.

"We are currently in a narrow window of time," says Rahr, "in which we can persuade local and national administrations to agree to set aside key watersheds in Kamchatka for protection, before petrochemical and mineral development destroys some of the most spectacular salmon rivers on Earth."