East Russian hardwood gone in ten years, warns BBC

The trade in illegal timber from eastern Russia to China could destroy the region’s hardwood forests in a decade, a BBC radio report has warned.

Correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes travelled to the forest in the far east of the country and accompanied an armed forestry patrol looking for illegal logging sites. They found an area that had been cleared and piles of oak and ash logs waiting to be trucked over the border into China.

“The illegal logging industry in this area is so vast, it dwarfs the legal trade,” he said. “And it’s all driven by the limitless appetite for timber in China.”

He also visited a Russian sawmill entirely manned by Chinese workers and exporting all its production to China.

Denis Smirnov, head of the WWF-Russia far eastern forest programme, said that the timber was ultimately destined for Europe and the USA in the form of furniture and flooring.

“China is only the middleman,” he said. “And people in Europe and America should understand what kind of footprint their consumption of these products is having on the Russian forest.”

Wingfield-Hayes concluded that the illegal trade threatened the existence of the forest itself.

“The area is so vast, it is easy to think that it will last for ever, but in as little as ten years all the hardwood from the Russian far east will be gone,” he said.