Deforestation reaches an alarming rate in Russia
In the Dalnerechinsk forest, the trees are disappearing at a catastrophic rate
The sun rises over what looks like an endless forest in Dalnerechinsk, 500 kilometers north of Vladivostok, where the trees are disappearing at a catastrophic rate.
Illegal loggers and those trying to find a way to outwit the system are cutting down forests in the Primorye region. The result could be an ecological crisis.
The World Wildlife Fund for Nature makes regular trips to help park rangers stop logging. But it is not an easy task.
The loggers have found a way to evade the regulations and thus jump the legislation.
This is a natural reserve where only sanitary registration of sick trees is allowed, according to the law not a single fruit can be collected.
But loggers use their sanitary logging permit to cut absolutely healthy trees and sell the profitable timber along the border with China.
The usurpation of permits is only a small portion of the problem, since thousands of trees are being felled without permission at all.
The teams say they are legal but they do not have documents and Alexander, if he finds them, can call the police. The numerical inferiority is overwhelming. Here very few rangers work in the Primorye region and the WWF says the government is not doing enough to stop this situation.
"The government started reforming the forest legislation in 2007 and from there we have a new forestry code, but the code still does not work." Says the local head of the forestry program WWF Smirnov Denis.
"If nobody tries to stop them, in five years the forest will be gone, they're selling everything to China, what will the people who come after?" exclaims Aleksander Samoylenko.
If the record does not stop in the region, one of the most natural places on Earth could disappear forever.