Rich and Lawless, Poachers Stalk Georgian Paradise

By Zviad Ruadze

LAGODEKHI, Georgia, May 16, 2006 (ENS) - “The Garden of Paradise” is a name local people have used for 200 years to describe the Lagodekhi, a mountainous nature reserve in eastern Georgia, which boasts staggering landscapes and unique plants and animals. Now locals say this paradise is under threat from intensive poaching.

“Since 1990, the number of deer in the reserve has fallen from 1,450 to 160,” said Levan Butkhuzi, head of NACRES, a Georgian environmental nongovernmental organization. “The situation is the same with many other species."

“The poaching could mean that the next generation will know about the unique local species of deer, Caucasian goats and ibexes only from photographs,” said Butkhuzi.

Map of Georgia shows the Lagodekhi region near the eastern border. (Map courtesy Government of Georgia)

The terrain rises to altitudes of 3,500 meters (11,480 feet), with high mountains ranging all along the perimeter. According to the official guidebook from the reserve’s museum, the mountainous location has helped preserve unique beech forests and 42 species of rare animals and birds.

The Lagodekhi reserve is popular with holidaymakers from the Georgian capital Tbilisi, though tourism is still underdeveloped and vacationers have to put up with fairly basic conditions. Even so, the gorges of Shromiskhevi and Lagodekhiskhevi, with their chains of small waterfalls, are always swarming with tourists in summertime.

However, more remote parts of the reserve have become a hunting ground for poachers who prey on Caucasian wild goats, chamois and especially deer.

“In recent years, the barbarity of poachers has reached new heights,” said Butkhuzi. “They shoot deer even from helicopters, usually at night.”

Those in charge of the reserve reject these allegations. “This was a real problem for several years - even two years ago - but nowadays poaching almost never happens,” said senior staff member Giorgi Mamukelashvili.

Mamukelashvili, who has worked in the Lagodekhi reserve all his life, does admit that the state of the park has been deteriorating ever since 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart and Georgia was wracked by internal strife.

Mountain goats on the steep slopes of Lagodekhi, Kaheti. (Photo by Levan Palavandishvily courtesy Agrotourism Association of Georgia)

At the same time, Georgia’s severe energy crisis, still not entirely resolved today, led to large-scale deforestation, with age-old and unique trees chopped down for firewood.

“That was a lawless time,” said Mamukelashvili. “We hadn’t the strength to fight them. They even looted the museum and damaged or stole stuffed animals.”

According to NACRES, poaching across Georgia has risen to a catastrophic level.

Karlo Amirgulashvili, who lives in the eastern town of Telavi and is chairman of the local Society of Nature-Lovers, says the situation was also critical in other parks in the Kakheti region, such as Mta-Tusheti and Vashlovani.

“The area is a habitat of the bezoar goat – a unique animal included in the Red Book,” he said, referring to the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. “Recently I saw with my own eyes hunters carrying one home on their shoulders. Its pelt is very valuable.”

Amirgulashvili said one could easily buy brown bear skins for US$280 or US$300 a time. In Georgia, bears are now only found in mountain nature reserves.

Although Mamukelashvili denied poaching is a problem, he admitted that park rangers do not have the resources to manage.

“Only 30 people are employed here to take care of this enormous territory, and the budget provides only funds to pay our salaries and nothing else,” said Mamukelashvili. “There was a time when we laid out salt licks for the animals, stacked hay for the winter season, and sowed corn for them so that they could eat and breed.”

Butkhuzi believes the problem will not be solved until greater efforts are made to prosecute the poachers.

“The administration of the park can cope with local hunters one way or another,” he said. “But dealing with a more significant category of poachers, the so-called New Georgians and officials of various ranks, is a far from easy task.”

According to Butkhuzi, even when poachers are caught red-handed, they simply pay a bribe, for example 400-500 laris (US$200 dollars) for killing a deer.

A river runs through the Lagodekhi forest. (Photo courtesy World Bank)

Under Georgian law, a poacher can receive a term of up to three years in prison.

But Guram Chuchulashvili, a Lagodekhi man who hunts legally outside the reserve, said the Shroma case was in fact the only one where someone was punished for poaching. He believes the roots of the problem lie in the complicity of high-ranking officials.

“A [legal] hunter will never bring himself to hunt in a reserve,” he said. “If anyone does enter the territory, it’s an official, not an ordinary citizen. Of course, it’s not up to the administration to solve the problem. It’s we, the population, who should stand up and help protect the reserve.”

According to the environmental inspection service for the whole of Kakheti region, up to five cases of poaching have been prevented since last September, with all the culprits brought to justice.

“We are trying to catch poachers,” said the chief of the service, David Utmelidze. “But if anyone has any information about this and they don’t let us know, we are powerless to do anything about it.”

{Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). Zviad Ruadze is a correspondent for "Spektri" newspaper, supported by IWPR, in Kakheti, eastern Georgia.}