Fires in the Siberian forests - the largest in the world and vital to the
planet's health - have increased tenfold in the last 20 years and could again
rage out of control this summer, Russian scientists warn.
They say they have neither the money nor the equipment to control or
extinguish the huge forests fires often started illegally and deliberately in
the Russian far east by rogue timber firms who plan to sell cheap lumber to
China.
In 2003, one of the hottest summers in Europe, 22m hectares of spruce, larch,
fir, Scots pine and oak were destroyed, charred, scorched or in some way
affected by fire. On one day in June that year, a US satellite recorded 157
fires across almost 11m hectares, sending a plume of smoke that reached Kyoto
5,000 kilometres (3,107 miles) away.
Forests absorb carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen. The world's
forests are part of the calculations behind the Kyoto agreement, ratified by
Russia, Britain and many other nations, but not the US or Australia, to control
the greenhouse emissions that fuel global warming.
Forests have also become part of the currency of exchange, called carbon
trading, intended to keep economies stable while limiting emissions overall.
Most attention has been focused on the steady destruction of the surviving
Amazon and Indonesian forests.
But the so-called "boreal" forests of Siberia, slow-growing but huge, are
equally vital. They became a global issue in 2003, when so many fires raged in
Siberia and the Far East that atmospheric scientists identified their smoke and
soot in Seattle, on the far side of the Pacific.
"You should try to protect your forests, because they are the lungs of the
planet: they absorb carbon dioxide," said Anatoly Sukhinin, of the Sukachev
Institute of Forestry in Krasnoyarsk, the once-closed Siberian centre where the
British Council has just opened Zero Carbon City, a touring exhibition on global
warming. "It looks to me like these huge forests are currently being devoured by
a powerful lung cancer."
Russia's forests stretch almost from the steppes of central Asia to the Arctic
permafrost, and from European Russia almost to the Bering Sea. Vast areas are
almost pristine, the preserve of migrating birds and the occasional hunter and
trapper.
In the north, the trees grow slowly, some reach the age of 400-500 years, and
are vulnerable to any disturbance. In the south, the forests become cluttered
with dry underbrush, and at risk from electrical storms. But the biggest threats
come from climate change and deliberate arson by people intent on illegal
logging.
"One factor is global warming, and there is absolutely no doubt that this is
happening. Global warming results in more extreme droughts: greater droughts,
longer droughts, and more frequent droughts. The other factor is underfunding.
We cannot do a good job to preserve and protect our forests," Dr Sukhinin said.
"There is very little money to fund such work. We have some equipment left from
the old times, we have some organisational support, but we are critically
underfunded by the government."
Cooperation with US and Canadian partners means that they get the big picture
from US government satellites.
In the enormous expanses of Siberia, they need specialised firefighting
aircraft. The government in Moscow has designed and made some, but sells or
leases them to other countries. Even when the foresters can identify the areas
ablaze, they can do little.
The forests are at risk in early spring - after the dry cold of the Arctic
winter - and in high summer, when temperatures soar. Fires in the forests are a
threat to oil and gas pipelines, to wildlife and to the permafrost itself. Heat
from the blazing underbrush and the parched canopy can disperse the clouds in a
fierce thermal updraft, melting the frozen soil and leaving behind a landscape
of charred stumps and dripping swamp.
On top of natural hazards, the Russian scientists count the risk of arson.
Paradoxically, forests have become money to burn. Licences to log healthy forest
are expensive. But timber merchants and logging companies can buy cheap licences
to clear stands of timber in some way damaged by fire.
Forests quickly recover from fires which rage through the underbrush. Many trees
have adapted to survive periodic ground-level fire, and flourish on the ashes of
their more lowly competitors.
"After a fire, the timber improves and is even better," said Dr Sukhinin. "And
that is the time when people can come in, fell the trees, sell the timber to
China and get good money.
"The Chinese themselves, they pay well and they pay the same money for timber
from affected areas as for timber from unaffected areas - and that is the reason
for the arsonists. It's illegal if you don't have a licence."