Year 1 Expedition

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Applying Action Competence

Tomsk Taiga—Darwin Project 14:045

Foreword by Dr Rob Fuller, British Trust for Ornithology

Everyone is aware that the world’s tropical forests are diminishing in extent. Newspapers regularly highlight the scale and urgency of the problem. The threats that face the vast northern forests of Canada, Scandinavia and Russia are far less widely appreciated. This is partly because the tropical forests are extraordinarily diverse in their plant and animal species so the potential losses are immense and receive much publicity.

But there is another factor. In the tropics the ongoing destruction of natural forest makes for striking headlines – the statistics of forest clearance in Amazonia and South-East Asia are depressingly familiar. There is no comparable devastating loss of forest area in the north where the problem is essentially one of management intensity. With increasing world demand for timber and wood products, the pressure on these forests has mounted and looks set to become more severe in the decades ahead. Nowhere are the northern forests more vulnerable than in the taiga – the vast natural boreal forests of Russia.

To many people in Western Europe the value of old forest stands is self-evident. These are rare places of enormous ecological, educational and aesthetic value. In Russia, however, the seemingly endless forests are often viewed from a different perspective and ecologists have perhaps tended to focus their attentions on the biodiversity hotspots such as the Altai and the Caucasus. The value and extent of the old growth forests in Siberia deserves greater recognition internationally for it is inevitable that conversion of taiga to managed forest will become more widespread.

Some areas already receive special protection but further opportunities are needed to create large reserves free from logging and also to establish areas where future management will allow retention of valuable wildlife features and habitats. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification offers one mechanism for achieving the latter for it requires that certified forests identify 10% of the forest area as a conservation zone where management will be conducted in ways that are compatible with the needs of biodiversity.

The project carried out in Western Siberia in 2005 by students of the Cambridge University Expedition Society is an excellent example of how the ecological importance of old-growth Siberian forests can be brought to wider attention. This study was conducted close to the major city of Tomsk at the extreme southern edge of the taiga zone. Several stands showed all the structural attributes of old growth with massive trees and large quantities of fallen wood.

The project has demonstrated that even in this relatively accessible region, there are forest stands of great ecological value that deserve long-term protection. Exactly how this might be achieved has yet to be determined although it is hoped that FSC certification will become a reality. The data collected on this expedition is an extremely important first step in that process.

Dr Robert J Fuller, Director of Habitats Research, British Trust for Ornithology

The full expedition report can be viewed or by clicking here: Tomsk Taiga 2005 Report.

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UK members of the 2005 fieldwork expedition.

Photo: Alex Benton

Year 1 Fieldwork Expedition