THE EXPERIENCE OF EVALUATION OF THE WILDLIFE RESOURCES IN THE MULTIPURPOSE INVENTORY OF THE SIKHOTE-ALIN FORESTS
(RUSSIAN FAR EAST))
V.N. Bocharnikov
Pacific Institute of Geography
Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
7 Radio str., Vladivostok 690041, Russia
INTRODUCTION
An observation of the principles of the sustainable development and use of natural resources requires an arrangement of the efficient system of their inventory to manage and conserve them at different stages of execution. As to the Russia’s territory, general change of the leading paradigm of the wildlife management has coincided with the known political and economic events in the country and a transition from the planned (Soviet) economy to the market one has become their leading vector. These processes resulted in a necessity of practically entire change of the management mechanism in such critical fields as the forestry and environmental protection.
Around the world, there are traditional contradictions between the interests of the forestry and hunting industry, a specificity of resolution of which has its own peculiarities depending on the region, ethnos and political situation. The prolonged and competent existence of the hunting industry as an independent phenomenon in which tens of thousand people are involved is characteristic of Russia (Dezhkin, 1971; Sukhomirov, 1971; Sitsko, 1974).
Under conditions of the Soviet economic system, the development of the vast Siberian and Northern territories has been assigned to large-scale enterprises the activity of which should be complex (Timofeev, 1974; Kucherenko, 1979; Sukhomirov, 1988) but a clear-cut differentiation forms the basis for it: ”green gold” - timber is produced by the State Timber industry enterprises (LesPromKhozes) while ”soft gold” - furs is harvested by GosPromKhozes and co-operative fur farms. In accordance with it, the departmental procedure of evaluating the resources have been developed and carried out.
At present, a redistribution of the property between the state and private capital and division of powers between the federal and regional bodies of power take place, the functions and obligations of departments controlling the use of natural resources in Russia are changing. The acute necessity has arisen to have the system of ”fast” evaluation of the natural resources, especially for the forest territories, the area of which is relatively great in Russia.
The special complex research project RU0026.02
PPIII "Economic" assessment project" financed by the "WWF Russian Programme Office" has been initiated. Its basic aim is to develop an algorithm for Multipurpose Resources Inventory for particular forest territory. A creation of a common for different departments and decision-makers operative (efficient) scheme to calculate the variants of the forest territories’ development should be a principal result of this project. The algorithm developed should provide the most objective choice among the alternatives suggested on the basis of the system of cost economic factors for each of them.MATERIALS AND METHODS
To execute this project, the model plot with area of 6.2 thousands ha located in the middle course of Iman (B. Ussurka) River, western tributary within the Ussuri River drainage basin, Primorsky Krai, Russian Far East (Figure 1) was chosen. This plot is a typical one of the Central Sikhote-Alin forests with characteristic combination of elements of two geobotanic areas: East-Asiatic coniferous-broad-leaved and South-Okhotsk dark coniferous forests, and three faunistic complexes: Amur, Korean pine-broad-leaved forests and mountain mixed forests (Southern part..., 1969). On the whole, in this plot, Korean pine and spruce-fir forests predominate which are distinguished by presence of various resources and high level of biodiversity (Bocharnikov, 1996).
According to the conditions of the complex project execution, the inventory by experts of all basic kinds of resources within particular territory was assumed to be carried out. As a constituent of these works, an assessment of commercial (game) animals as most exploited objects of the animal kingdom under current conditions has been made. It has been carried out on the basis of complex winter inventory (registration) of commercial animals and mapping of the hunters’ results and, in so doing, calculation of productivity of the hunting grounds has been made on the basis of market demand for harvested production. Arrangement of primary data by properties of hunting grounds, conditions of hunting and marketing possibilities of production into the original database allowed to carry out an operative analysis and necessary calculation for developing practical model.
The reason who will be main user of the system of economic assessment of natural resources influences, to a large measure, on a choice of its methodical and conceptual basis. It was suggested that the operative multipurpose resources inventory (MRI) will be necessary to the decision-makers at regional level who exercise a general control over all the existing resources and, thereby, should make decisions on predominant type of development (management) of one or other plot of territory. It is suggested that the decision should be made with consideration for future possible prospects and total value of all resources but an actual evaluation is usually limited by ”weighting” of those kinds of production which are in market demand or is based on momentary interest. Nevertheless, even such approach requires the system of ”fast” object evaluation which will allow to make the fundamental decision. It is the most important stage in the regional planning because a general zoning of the territory is further strengthened by creation of business-plans, calculation of cutting areas for harvest or by preparation of standard project for OOPT.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To limit the number of indices, it is needed to make a selection of the objects for economic evaluation. ”Today Marketing” is a fundamental procedure on the basis of which the number of the objects evaluated, kinds of production, expediency of use of one or other kind of animal, resource or plot of territory can be determined.
At first stage, the initial redistribution of commercial species on the basis of demand in the external market (legal and illegal export) and domestic market (regional and/or local consumption) takes place. On the basis of marketing, the particular kinds of production or semi-products of commercial species (animals) are determined which can be released. Under current conditions, there is a quite limited demand for export (legal) of traditional Russian furs: sable, otter, squirrel, lynx; remedies (usually, illegal export and permitted export to a limited measure): antlers of young Siberian stag, musk deer musk, bile of bear and wild boar. The bulk of other color furs (fox, racoon dog, Siberian weasel, mink), meat, skins and games (bird) is used by local people or sold insignificant distance from the hunting-trapping place.
Data of volume of sales, prices and sellers/purchasers are now quite incomplete, scanty and insufficiently reliable. The centralised statistical procedures are practically entirely lacking while the financial and economic indices in the compulsory reports of enterprises don’t often reflect the actual situation. As a consequence of these reasons and general instability of governmental policy and regional specificity, all the earlier developed algorithms of calculation of the hunting grounds’ productivity, production cost, rate of profit etc. are no longer suitable.
In realization of the project, to calculate the hunting grounds’ productivity, we have chosen a minimum number of commercial object which the local residents continue to procure. To calculate the population density, inhabiting species and their total reserves, data of inventory for 1997/98 season and calculated species productivities for basic commercial animals were used. As a basic formula for calculation of total productivity of hunting grounds with a certain share of conditionally, a formula by V.M. Kozlov (1997) could be used for particular list of objects. It is measured by difference between incomes from production sales and volume of expenses for acquisition and development of grounds (most often zero for the last component).
M
Ex = å KI x LI - T - A - B
I=1
where: K - quantity of production of certain kind (pieces, kg);
P - difference in purchase price and basic price of this production (Roubles);
T - transportation charges for development of grounds (Roubles);
A - depreciation charges for cost of structures needed to develop grounds (Roubles);
B - expenses for reproduction of resources (Roubles);
I - ordinal number of production;
M - population density of hunting (commercial) objects (individuals/1000 ha)
Calculation of productivity for the model territory required a creation of a quite simple but efficient DB allowing, upon arrangement of basic structure and entering base information, to replenish and correct data. Its general purpose is to adjust data which the owners of hunting grounds have and regularly obtain. Therefore, a creation of prototype allowed, for the first time, to carry out the procedure of automation of departmental calculations followed by distribution of analytical references to all users of hunting grounds. A knowledge of general situation in Krai concerning the influence on commercial species and their habitats allow to change, to a cardinal measure, the practice of wildlife management which is unable to provide a conservation of their reserves.
The DB ”Okhotekonomika” (Hunting Economy) consists of four basic modules: ”Resources”, ”Commercial (hunting) objects”, ”Hunting grounds”, ”Marketing”. The module ”Commercial (hunting) objects” for a model plot was arranged on the basis of the ”List of commercial species in the Primorsky Krai territory”. For each of these species, the kinds of possible production, status, harvest methods, normative limitations were shown.
The module ”Marketing” was arranged on the basis of connections with commercial (hunting) objects for each of which a needed information of export, prices, countries-producers etc. was collected. Two remaining modules ”Resources” and ”Hunting grounds” were only arranged for model plot although their general structure allows to enter data actually for any territory. The peculiarity of the former is using partially processed data (average density of species, total number) and relations with Tables considering a specificity of hunting organisation (harvest standards, recommended population density)/ The module ”Hunting grounds” was, to a great measure, oriented to calculation of forest types using maps and vegetation indices themselves for particular portions were transformed into characteristics of hunting grounds using a special algorithm (Table 2 - types of hunting grounds).
CONCLUSION
The results of this project in which the calculation of hunting-trapping production has been made within the framework of general synchronous estimation of the forest plot’s productivity were an important precedent of introduction of the current complex territorial evaluation under new Russian conditions.
The experience obtained has shown a high efficiency for making of correct decisions concerning the natural resources management and natural zoning provision. There is a necessity for correcting the system developed and its comprehensive discussion to successfully introduce it in the modern practice of the decision-makers of the regional level. Use of GIS technology for calculations, production of maps together with the development of friendly interface of the applied program allow to increase an efficiency of departmental monitoring and inventory which is a necessary element of sustainable wildlife management.
REFERENCES