Nearly 300 years ago, one of the first researchers of the Kamchatka Peninsula, George Stelleronce wrote:

“Kamchatka lives almost solely on fish. If you hit the water with a spear you rarely miss a fish.  Fishing nets or seines are useless in Kamchatka for that reason.  It’s impossible to drag them ashore, they tear because ofthe abundance of fish.”

Many years ago, it seemed that the salmon would last forever.  However, today we know that all natural resources are limited, and Kamchatka’s salmon need protection.  So what is the current state of Kamchatka salmon?  The Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Institute of Geography has published extensively on the topic. (more…)

Almost every culture has a celebration to give thanks to nature for the previous year, the harvest, and the supplies stored for the winter. The Itelmen, one of the most ancient peoples of Kamchatka, call this holiday Alkhalalalai which is traditionally celebrated on the last weekend of September.  Recently this holiday has been celebrated in the Itelmen village of Pimchakh, after taking place for many years in Kovran, the spiritual and cultural center of the Itelmen people. This year, Alkhalalalai became an official holiday on Kamchatka’s calendar, a natural move, since the holiday unites all of the peoples of Kamchatka on one field, with no attention paid to population, age, or religious faith.

The celebration’s motto – “Here there are no guests, only participants” – came true from the very first minute of this year’s event. All of the guests were involved in the ceremonial cleansing of the hardships of the past year, and in the ritual feeding of Khantai. Khantai is the aboriginal god worshipped by the indigenous peoples of northern Russia and the Russian Far East. Aboriginals bring gifts to him since he rules the catch of fish.  Then they give thanks to him for the abundant catches.  The spirits were kind to the celebration’s participants and granted them a perfect, sunny day, even though the forecast predicted cloudy rainy weather, and it rained on both the day before and the day after the celebration. (more…)

This past weekend we were fortunate to attend the Golden Springs Festival, which celebrates the creative arts of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East. The festival took place in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

The festival’s gala concert was held in the recently refurbished drama theater. The performers met their guests at the theater’s entrance, and the sound of traditional drums (known as bubins) and songs set a festive atmosphere. The concert opened with a performance by Mengo, a renowned Koryak national ensemble, which has represented the creative arts of the indigenous peoples of the north on some of the most prestigious stages in Russia and throughout the world. It was lucky to see them perform on their native Kamchatka. Mengo delighted viewers with its performers’ sharp movements, perfect figures, and dramatic dances, as well as the beauty of their faces and costumes. (more…)

My recent trip to Altai was my third since last year and every time I traveled through the Republic, it was a time for reflection and discovery. My former colleagues and friends who have worked or still work in Altai warn me that it is a special and sacred place, and that once visited, it stays in your heart and changes your life. This time I helplessly fell in love with Altai – the serenity and piercing beauty of Lake Teletskoe, fields of flowers in the Karakol valley, lofty mountains of the sacred Uch Enmek, and wide plains and horsemen of Kosh-Agach. Most importantly, I felt at home with the people – their warmth, kindness and spiritual strength. (more…)

I shot the following videos at Lake Azabache and in Bistrinsky Nature Park in central Kamchatka during a mid-July trip with my colleague Igor Goldfarb.

Here you can see a spawning stream filled with sockeye salmon as they complete the final leg of their journey to the spawning grounds. When I took this video, these fish had already traveled from the ocean, up two rivers, across a lake, and up several miles of this stream. The white fish have already spawned, and are beginning to die. The media portrays post-spawn salmon mortality as a romantic sacrifice, but the truth is far more gruesome: after completing their “duty,” the salmon literally begin to fall apart. The upshot is that the nutrients the salmon bring to Kamchatka’s rivers feed entire villages, an enormous population of bears, and even fertilizes the surrounding forest. (more…)

I have never seen so many insects in my life. Tiny black flies, quarter-sized mosquitoes and enormous horseflies competed to distract Tatiana Indanova as she crouched at the edge of a spring-fed creek in the 90-degree afternoon heat, using one hand to collect aquatic insect larvae, or benthos, while swatting the biting insects with her free hand.

Tatiana is a 21 year old college student and member of the Even tribe from the remote, indigenous town of Anavgai, where she is universally known as “Tanyushka.” Many college students Tanya’s age would look forward to spending their summers in dance clubs or at a lakeshore resort or pretty much anywhere but a mosquito-infested wilderness crawling with bears. But for the third consecutive summer Tanya is using her free months to mount one- and two-week expeditions to remote waterways in Bistrinsky Natural Park on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, where she collects samples of aquatic insect life that she later analyzes at her university’s laboratory to detect changes in water quality. Tanya’s project is supported by a grant from the Lach Ethno-Ecological Information Center, which conducts an annual minigrants competition with Pacific Environment aid. I was fortunate enough to accompany Tanya on the first of this year’s expeditions, which had us visit a reindeer herders’ camp, cross high mountain passes, camp at a riverside fishing village, swim in natural hot springs, and twice get chased by bears. (more…)

Kolya is the kind of boss that everyone at once prays they will have and dreads they will end up with. As a leader he is nearly flawless; knowledgeable, experienced, and deadly calm under pressure. As a teacher, he is all of these things, but also impatient, short-tempered, and sarcastic.

Kolya is the indigenous Even hunter and mountain man who led me, Tatiana Indanova, a PE partner who monitors water quality, two Muscovite botanists, his son Zhenya, and a local friend on a week-long expedition through the Kamchatka wilderness to conduct Indanova’s water quality monitoring project, collect samples of Kamchatka’s flora, and find some escaped reindeer.

From day one, I knew what kind of leader Kolya would be: as we packed our belongings into our saddlebags, I found myself standing around, unsure how to pack and not wanting to get in the way. As Kolya packed some of my things, he stopped for a moment to pull off his jacket. “Too hot?” I asked, hoping to strike up a conversation. “Yeah,” he replied with a grin, but looking me dead in the eyes, “because I’m not just standing around.” I still chuckle when I remember how he scolded his son’s friend for pulling in a net too slowly: “Pull harder, dammit, you’re not undressing a girl!” (more…)

Posted by Jon Spaulding

The Russian environmental community won a victory in late May when a Pacific Environment partner NGO, Geblerovsky Ecological Society (GES) successfully challenged the commercial logging company Birch and the government agency that issued the permit to clear-cut a ‘protected’ forest reserve in pristine, remote Altai Krai, in southern Siberia. On May 27, the regional court ruled against the logging company and their government allies, ordering an immediate halt to destructive clear-cutting in the roughly 90,000 acre Zalesovsky Forest Reserve, a rare and ancient taiga ecosystem that is home to bear, moose, and many other species, some of them officially listed as endangered. This victory resulted from Pacific Environment’s funded project work to GES on Public Forest Monitoring.

The decision sets a legal precedent of national significance by using Russian citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed right to a healthy environment to win a court case against a government agency. It also is indicative of the potential power grassroots NGOs have in promoting respect for the rule of law in Russia.

GES executive director Aleksey Gribkov acknowledged that the victory would not have been possible without the legal advice of a growing network of allied NGOs throughout Russia that Pacific Environment has been helping to cultivate over the past twenty years.

With a current grant from Pacific Environment, GES defends critical habitat for protecting endangered species and conserving Altai’s unique biodiversity. The project, Public Forest Monitoring, taps into many Russians’ discontent with government and commercial abuse of public resources, and focuses on recruiting and training regional volunteer activist groups to detect illegal poaching of wildlife and illegal logging of protected forests.

For over ten years, GES has focused on biodiversity issues, conducting conservation activities in nature preserves, assisting in the creation of school-based forest stewardship programs, monitoring conservation lands, conducting environment education, and leading anti-poaching raids.

To learn more about our Russia Program, visit www.pacificenvironment.org/russia.

The Day of the Reindeer Herder for the first time received the status of an official holiday in Kamchatka on the Kamchatka peninsula. The holiday was celebrated on March 6, 2010 in the indigenous village of Esso.

Pacific Environment’s Kamchatka Field Associate Igor Goldfarb visited Esso with his wife Alla, and they have recorded their impressions below:

The first thing that we noticed was the enormous number of people that came to celebrate. The entire area – part of a helicopter landing pad – was full of people; men and women, the elderly and lots of children. We later learned that many of them, like us, made the 500 kilometer trip from Petropavlovsk to attend the celebrations.

There were also guests from other villages to the north and we even met a few Muscovites who work as volunteers in Bystrinsky Park.

We were able to get to know the northern reindeer and discovered that it is a relatively small animal with beautiful dark, expressive eyes. Visitors were able to pet them and photograph them nearby.

Later the races began, and spectators lined the fences as the reindeer sleds and their drivers prepared themselves for the start. At the referee’s signal, the sleds shot off the starting line, raced past the spectators in a cloud of white snow, and were soon hidden behind the white hills.

The event continued with performances by national ensembles, including organizations of both children and adults that danced to live song and tambourine and accordion music. The performances were so bright and energetic that neither the performers nor the spectators ever stopped smiling.

Nearby, traditional venison soup was prepared over the pleasant smell of an open fire, and all were invited to sample the delicacy.

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My colleague Evan Sparling and I recently traveled to Altai to touch base with our partners in the field, meet with regional stakeholders, and participate in a conference on sacred sites organized by one of our partners – the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai. As I have now fully transitioned into my new position as Program Associate for Community-Based Initiatives for Pacific Environment, the trip provided me with an opportunity to fully immerse myself into program work and issues faced by indigenous communities in Russia, especially in the current economic and political climate. This was my second trip to Altai since I started working for Pacific Environment, and I was very excited to visit the sacred land and meet with our partners once again.

Sacred mountain in Chui Oozy Nature Park, Altai Republic, Russia

For centuries sacred sites served people as places where they could come to pray, cleanse themselves, and recover from the hardships of life. For some nations, sacred places are Catholic monasteries, Orthodox cathedrals, Muslim mosques, and Buddhist temples. For indigenous cultures, and specifically shamanists, these are places or objects created by nature: mountains, healing springs, mountain passes, plants and animals.

Altai has also always been the heart of Shamanism in Siberia. During  Soviet times the communists extinguished shamanism and many of the shamans who lived during those days were either killed or sent to gulags. For many years shaman clans had to hide their identity and it was only after perestroika and democracy that shamanism experienced its revival. Nowadays it is not as rare to find a shaman in the remote villages of Altai. Luckily, the traditional knowledge was kept and passed onto new generations.

One of the trip’s most memorable moments was meeting a local shaman by the name of Slava Cheltuev in Kosh-Agach, a region bordering Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan.

Kurai Village, 60 km from the Russian-Mongolia border

Upon our arrival, Slava greeted us at his home with traditional tea with milk, salt, butter, and cracked wheat. It has been only three  years since Slava was chosen by his community to be a shaman and a keeper of traditional knowledge.  As a relatively young shaman at the age of 41, he feels responsible to learn from elders about his land, sacred places, and traditions so that he can pass this knowledge on to younger generations. As Russian is not his first language, most of his words were translated from indigenous Altayan into Russian by our partner Chagat.  (Today, there are only 70,000 speakers of Altayan in the world).

Cows in Kosh-Agach region, Altai Republic, Russia

Although some of what Slava said was revealed in a very simple language, his words carried a very deep knowledge and understanding of his roots and his role within his community. He talked about being close to the land and local sacred places, talking to spirits – guardians of their lands – and the meaning of dreams.

(more…)