Kronotsky Biosphere Reserve is the largest and most famous
reserve in Kamchatka. Almost all landscapes of the peninsula are
represented in the reserve: shrub and wooded middle mountains,
tundra coastal lowlands and, of course, volcanic high mountains with
glaciers.
The state nature reserve was founded on the site of
the former Soboliniy zakaznik in Kronoki. In 1951 it was liquidated,
and then restored. In 1961 the reserve was liquidated again. Its
final restoration to its former borders took place in January 1967.
In 1985, the reserve became part of the international network of
biosphere reserves, and since 1996 it has been on the list of UNESCO
World Natural Heritage sites “Volcanoes of Kamchatka”. The main goal
of the reserve was to restore the population of the valuable
fur-bearing animal - the sable.
According to the Regulations on the Federal State Institution
“Kronotsky State Natural Biosphere Reserve” (approved by the Ministry of
Natural Resources of the Russian Federation on May 16, 2001), “economic
and other activities that adversely affect natural objects and complexes
of the reserve are prohibited within the protected zone of the reserve”;
“on the territory and in the water area of the reserve, any activity
that is contrary to the tasks of the reserve and the regime of special
protection of its territory is prohibited.”
The international
status of protected areas for the Kronotsky Reserve is defined as a
biosphere reserve, a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage site as
part of the Volcanoes of Kamchatka site. Category of protected areas
according to the classification of the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN, IUCN): strict nature reserve.
Federal State Budgetary Institution "Kronotsky State Reserve" is a
nature protection and research institution subordinate to the Ministry
of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation. It manages
three specially protected natural areas of federal significance: the
Kronotsky Nature Reserve, the Koryaksky Nature Reserve and the South
Kamchatka Federal Reserve. In these territories and neighboring
settlements, projects are being implemented aimed at protecting and
studying nature, involving the local population in environmental
activities.
At the insistence of the former Polish exile, the well-known
zoologist and geographer B. I. Dybovsky, in Kamchatka in 1880, for the
first time, forbidden dates for sable hunting were established (from
March 1 to October 15). Later, B. I. Dybovsky, on behalf of the
inhabitants of the Petropavlovsk District, petitioned the government to
declare the Kronok and Asachi areas protected. The request was granted,
and in 1882, to protect not only the sable, but also the bighorn sheep,
reindeer and river otter, the reserve of these lands was established.
Protective measures gave a certain result, although the reserve did not
have staff and funding, and the regime was supported only by the forces
of the local population interested in preserving resources.
Attempts to create a reserve as an institution continued. In 1916-1917,
an expedition of the Department of Agriculture worked in Kamchatka, and
based on the results of its research, on July 8, 1917, the Kronotsky
area was declared a reserve by the new Provisional Government of Russia.
However, due to the Civil War, this plan was not implemented.
Only after the establishment of Soviet power, in 1926, already the Far
Eastern Executive Committee, and in 1929 the Kamchatka Regional
Executive Committee decide on the organization of the Kronotsky Reserve,
which was created on June 1, 1934.
Until 1938, the reserve was
subordinate to various hunting organizations, which at that time were
responsible for nature protection, then it was transferred to the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and in 1951 it was liquidated.
This was due to the line on the "conquest of nature" and the recognition
of "passive conservation of nature" as inappropriate. Since the 1930s,
despite the regime of the reserve, oil has been searched here. In 1959,
the Kronotsky State Reserve was restored to the system of the RSFSR
Glavokhota, but on June 10, 1961, it was liquidated again during the
campaign to eliminate the reserves.
In the spring of 1967, the
reserve (with an area of 964 thousand hectares) was restored at the
request of the participants in the 2nd All-Union Conference of
Volcanologists.
The main part of the territory of the reserve is occupied by forests
of stone birch (Erman birch), thickets of cedar and alder elfin are
common in the upper parts of the mountain slopes. Coniferous forests of
Cajander larch with the participation of Ayan spruce and flat-leaved
birch are common in the Kronotskoye Lake basin. Floodplain forests grow
along the rivers, where the main forest-forming species are fragrant
poplar, chosenia, Sakhalin willow, and downy alder. In the second tier
of coniferous and mixed forests, there are Asian bird cherry, green
hawthorn, and Siberian mountain ash. In the undergrowth of stone-birch
forests, elderberry mountain ash, which has large sweet fruits, wild
rose, birch-leaved spirea, blue honeysuckle and Shamisso, goat and
udskaya willows and others are common. In the extreme south of the
reserve, there is an endemic of Kamchatka - the Kamchatka elder, here
the northern border of the distribution of this species passes.
The herbarium of the Kronotsky State Reserve began to be systematically
formed since 1987, the total number of samples is 1150.
Of the
mammals in the reserve, there are brown bear, wild reindeer, elk,
bighorn sheep, lynx, fox, wolverine, sable, ermine, weasel, squirrel,
black-capped marmot, American ground squirrel, northern pika, voles,
shrews, etc. Chiroptera are represented by 2 species - Brandt's night
lamp and northern leather. Pacific salmon - pink salmon, chum salmon,
chinook salmon, coho salmon, and sockeye - come to spawn in the rivers
of the reserve. There are no reptiles, only 1 species of amphibians -
the Siberian salamander. On the coast of the Kronotsky Bay there are sea
lion rookeries. In the surrounding waters there are many species of
whales - gray whales, Japanese right whales, killer whales, porpoises,
as well as seals and sea otters - sea otters.
The most important
role of the reserve is in the conservation of the brown bear: one of the
largest protected wild populations of these animals in Russia (more than
800 individuals)[6] lives here, which ensures their stable preservation
on the peninsula.
The Kamchatka subspecies of the wild reindeer
is one of the largest in the world and is currently preserved mainly on
the territory of the reserve, where it lives in mountainous volcanic
regions. The fate of this species in Kamchatka strongly depends on the
safety of the population in the protected area.
On the southeastern coast of the reserve, the climate is maritime and humid. The warmest month is August and the coldest month is January. The average annual rainfall is 1000-1500 mm. The growing season lasts 130-140 days.
The Valley of Geysers is one of the largest geyser fields in the
world and the only one in Eurasia [source not specified 808 days]. It is
a deep canyon of the Geysernaya River, on the sides of which, on an area
of about 6 km², there are numerous outlets of geysers and hot springs,
mud pots, thermal sites, waterfalls and lakes.
The Uzon volcano
caldera is a unique area of complex manifestation of modern geological
and microbiological processes: thermal springs and reservoirs create
unusual conditions for the development of thermophilic organisms.
Kronotskaya Sopka is an active volcano with a height of 3528 m. The
crater is filled with an extrusive plug, there are fumaroles (their
activity was especially active in 1923). Volcanic eruptions are rare.
Lake Kronotskoye is the largest freshwater lake in Kamchatka. The
lake is inhabited by a freshwater form of sockeye salmon (kokanee) and
three endemic species of mountain charr. This unique ecosystem can serve
as a benchmark for monitoring studies.
Graceful fir grove is a
site of dark coniferous forest formed by the endemic of Kamchatka -
graceful fir, with an area of only about 20 hectares in the lower
reaches of the Novy Semyachik River, 4 km from the Pacific coast.
The modern territory of the reserve had the status of economic lands
for many years, in the 1960s and 1970s settlements and military units
were located on it, oil exploration was underway, and a hydroelectric
power station was being designed. In 2015, the reserve was the first in
Russia to be included in the pilot program for eliminating damage from
economic activity, having allocated funding in the amount of 454 million
rubles.
From February 2015 to August 2016 Alexander Ilyin was the
Deputy Director for the Protection of Protected Areas. During his work
at the post, Vitaliy Drozd's Ecology company received a contract to
carry out work to clean up the territory of the reserve. In 2016, at the
age of 36, the director of the reserve, Tikhon Shpilenok, a hereditary
defender of nature, the son of the head of the Bryansk Forest reserve
and the famous wildlife photographer Igor Shpilenok, died of cancer.
Tikhon Shpilenok learned about his diagnosis in April 2015, because of
the treatment he had to leave the reserve and he was not present at the
workplace for almost the entire 2016. In March 2017, Tikhon's place as
director of the reserve was taken by his brother Pyotr Shpilenok. In
2018, Vitaliy Drozd became a defendant in a fraud case, and in 2020, an
embezzlement case. As part of his cooperation with the investigation, he
stated that Tikhon Shpilenok and his colleagues stole the money given
for cleaning up. Thanks to a deal with the investigation, instead of 10
years in prison, Drozd received a suspended sentence. Based on the
testimony of Drozd and Ilyin, the Investigative Committee of Kamchatka
opened a criminal case against four employees of the reserve: Roman
Korchigin, director of science and tourism, Daria Panicheva, head of the
scientific department, Oksana Terekhova, deputy director for financial
support, and Nikolai Pozdnyakov, deputy director for general affairs.
According to investigators, an organized criminal group from the
leadership of the Kronotsky Reserve stole 460 million rubles allocated
by the state for its cleaning, and buried the scrap metal right on the
territory of the reserve. The prosecution requested 6 years in prison
for Roman Korchigin, 7 years for Daria Panicheva, 8 for Oksana
Terekhova, and 4.5 years for Nikolai Pozdnyakov.
Defenders of the
reserve employees draw attention to massive inconsistencies in the
prosecution materials: for example, evidence of Roman Korchigin's guilt
is based on episodes of 2015, when he was not yet working in the
reserve. In addition, the investigation did not conduct a single
confrontation, refused to provide an expert assessment of documents and
an examination of the work performed. The places on the territory of the
reserve, where the garbage is allegedly buried, are also not named. The
fact that 243 km of the coastline of the reserve was cleared of garbage,
having taken out more than 1,300 tons of solid waste and more than 5,000
barrels of fuel and lubricants, is confirmed by a huge amount of photo
and video materials, numerous reports published on federal channels, in
many of they were attended by regional officials. The court, however,
refused to take into account all these documents. The court also refused
to add to the case the report of the Moscow State University scientists
for 2021, in which they documented the restoration of the vegetation
cover in the cleared areas. One of the witnesses for the prosecution,
Koval I.S., confirmed that some of the signatures in the protocols had
been forged on his behalf, this was confirmed by the examination.
The defendants were supported by Governor of the Kamchatka Territory
Vladimir Solodov, Honored Ecologist of the Russian Federation Vsevolod
Stepanitsky, Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Kamchatka
Territory Alexei Kumarkov, and Director of RussiaDiscovery Vadim
Mamontov. On June 30, 2022, in protest against the unfair persecution of
colleagues, director Pyotr Shpilenok filed a letter of resignation.
Shpilenok is sure that a lobby of supporters of industrial salmon
farming on Lake Kronotsky is behind the accusation. The project for the
construction of an artificial fishway between the lake and the Pacific
Ocean belongs to the Russian Fishery Company of Gleb Frank, the
son-in-law of businessman Gennady Timchenko. Daria Panicheva, as the
head of the scientific department of the reserve, was involved in the
preparation of scientific justifications against the project. It is
noteworthy that even the main witness for the prosecution, Vitaly Drozd,
said in court that he did not understand “what the reserve’s employees
are doing here,” and Alexander Ilyin said that “cleaning work was
carried out with the involvement of equipment, with the involvement of
ships, transport.”
Only when a guilty verdict had already been
passed, in early December 2022, the Ministry of Natural Resources
ordered an examination of the state of nature in the reserve. The
examination showed that there are no waste disposal sites on its
territory, but evidence of work on the movement of waste to the points
of export is visible. This completely refutes the main accusation of the
investigation that the budget money was embezzled and the scrap metal
was simply buried. Lyubov Timofeeva, director of the natural park
"Volcanoes of Kamchatka", resigned as a sign of protest against the
persecution of her colleagues. In early September 2022, over 60
representatives of environmental organizations sent an open letter to
Russian President Vladimir Putin with a request to take the case against
Kronotsky employees under personal control and instruct the Prosecutor
General's Office and the RF IC to re-examine the case materials and
conduct independent examinations.
The lack of staff due to a
criminal case led to the suspension of research and excursion activities
in the Kronotsky Reserve and the South Kamchatka Federal Reserve.
On February 7, 2023, the Kamchatka Regional Court overturned the
verdict and released the defendants from custody, the case was sent for
review to the court of first instance. Defense lawyer Irina Dyachenko
and former director of Kronotsky Pyotr Shpilenok called this an
important step towards restoring justice