Prosecutor's Office checks for violations in Adygean reserves

Following the visit of the Mission of the UNESCO and IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources), the local Prosecutor's Office has started its own check in the Maikop District of Adygea in the territory of the World Natural Heritage "Zapadny Kavkaz" (Western Caucasus); the check may last till the end of May.

The visit of the Joint UNESCO-IUCN Mission to Sochi area and mountain part of Adygea took place on April 18-25. The UNESCO was represented by Kishore Rao, Deputy Director of the World Heritage Centre, the IUCN - by expert Herve Lethier.

The aim of the visit was to assess the threats to the object of the World Natural Heritage "Zapadny Kavkaz", in the immediate proximity from which now a wide-scale construction is underway of sports objects for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

The ecologists remained dissatisfied with the course of the Mission's visit, which "was rather saddened by the attempts of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to prevent participation of ecological NGOs in its work and to minimize contacts of 'green' representatives with the experts."

According to Andrei Rudomakha, coordinator of the Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus, "at the last minute, the programme of the Mission's visit was changed for the worst. In particular, a meeting with the members of the Ecological Watch and WWF (World Wildlife Fund) of Russia with Herve Lethier in Sochi on April 19 was excluded from it. A survey of barbarous wood cuttings in the territory of the Heritage in Adygea and a visit to the elite mountain-skiing complex 'Moon Meadow', illegally built in the territory of the Heritage, were not included into the visit schedule."

Nevertheless, as Mr Rudomakha has noted, the experts of the Mission, by bypassing the MNR, managed to hold nonofficial meetings with representatives the Greenpeace of Russia, Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus, NABU-Kavkaz and WWF of Russia.

Kishore Rao, Deputy Director of the UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, has stated that in his report he will surely indicate the inadmissibility of construction of any roads in the territory of the World Heritage "Zapadny Kavkaz". What has most of all disappointed the "greens", as Rudomakha said, was Mr Rao's statement that, in his opinion, the construction of Olympic objects on the Grushevoy Range presents no direct threat to the World Heritage.