« MISCELLANEOUS»

NO PERSON — NO PROBLEM
(OR THE SECRET THOUGHTS OF ONE RESERVE'S DIRECTOR)

In a recent article in the Nature Reserve Herald, Kavkazsky director V. Brinikh argues that the reserves’ top priority now is security. Which seems odd since there is no argument there. Indeed the Federal Act On Protected Natural Areas says the same thing.

In actual fact, Brinikh’s secret point is something else entirely. He considers that research departments and researchers who get in a reserve director's way should be gotten out of the way. In the middle of the last paragraph he writes: “…sending experts into the regional orbit allows one to settle some of the conflicts between the reserve's management and its research staff…” If one takes this simple thought a step further, one can easily envisage the broad-scale scrapping of research departments (or their researchers being sent into regional orbit, as Brinikh so deftly puts it): that would not only allow the director to settle conflicts with his researchers, it would eliminate the problem entirely. As the saying goes, “no man — no problem”.

Conservationists know very well that it is the researchers who care most about a reserve’s security and who keep the reserve’s director on his toes (i.e. keep him from inviting local or foreign friends in to poach or fish where they should not, etc.). The researchers are the only real watchdogs. If research departments are scrapped, the system of nature reserves will quickly turn into the system of ancestral estates with hunting and fishing “rights” to handed down from generation to generation of corrupt directors.

The research departments within nature reserves are the main supporters of nature conservation. We can quote hundreds of instances when, thanks to researchers, gross violations on the part of reserve directors and outside authorities were made public.

I will not discuss the problems involved in reforming these research departments here. These problems are numerous and very complicated indeed. I only want to draw attention to the highly dangerous trial balloon released by V. Brinikh, that is his effort to start a discussion about doing away with the research departments at Russian nature reserves. How strange that this idea should come from the director of Kavkazsky, long famous for its very advanced research department.

Finally I would like to note (with satisfaction) that V. Brinikh’s article has already generated much negative feedback from reserve experts. Thank Heaven reserve staff are not as naive as some people think.

A. Nikolsky,
Member World Committee on Protected Areas
IUCN

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