Victory in Sakhalin!

Sakhalin Environment Watch (SEW), a leading Russian environmental organization and long-time Pacific Environment partner, recently scored a victory that will facilitate the creation of new protected areas and support existing nature preserves in Sakhalin. Last week, the governor of Sakhalin Region approved a long-term development plan for Sakhalin's protected areas and ordered the creation of a more detailed plan for adoption over the next year. The plan is expected to allocate up to $25 million for environmental education programs, scientific research, job creation, tourism development, and infrastructure improvement in protected areas. The proposal also includes the creation of new conservation projects, including one to protect the habitat of Sakhalin taimen on Dagi River and another to open an educational Salmon Center on the Lyutoga River.

This proposition comes at a critical moment for the region. Twenty-one specially protected areas in Sakhalin have been closed over the past decade, decreasing the island's total area of protected land by 27 percent. Granting land protected status prevents logging of Sakhalin's old growth forests and protects the island's unique biodiversity from industrial development. Sakhalin is home to dozens of salmon spawning rivers, a large population of brown bears, and many endangered and threatened birds. Prioritizing conservation in the regional socio-economic development plan will increase protections for natural areas and facilitate the creation of healthy living and working conditions for locals.

Sakhalin Environment Watch is one of the key local environmental organizations that successfully lobbied for the initiative. The group prepared a draft of the long-term plan for the development of protected areas in collaboration with the Wild Salmon Center and Sakhalin's Ministry of Natural Resources.

Pacific Environment has been a long-time supporter of Sakhalin Environment Watch and has helped build the organization into one of Russia's most influential environmental watchdogs. In April 2011, SEW Executive Director Dmitry Lisitsyn received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in recognition of his decades-long struggle to defend Sakhalin Island from onshore and offshore oil and gas projects.