Fwd: Oil Development In Proposed Khanty Biosphere Reserve

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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 14:58:27 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Fwd: Oil Development In Proposed Khanty Biosphere Reserve

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Felix Corley <[email protected]>

Fwd: Oil Development In Proposed Khanty Biosphere Reserve


--------------------Forwarded message----------------------- 
From: Andrew Wiget <[email protected]>
 
URGENT     URGENT  URGENT  URGENT  URGENT  URGENT
 
TO THOSE CONCERNED ABOUT RUSSIAN ECOLOGY AND NATIVE PEOPLES. 
YOUR HELP IS URGENTLY NEEDED.
 
Many of you know of the project to establish a Biosphere reserve in
the basin of the B. And M. Yugan rivers, that would preserve the last
large tract of Middle West Siberian taiga and the last large community
of Khanty people living in a traditional way.
 
The administration has been playing a stalling game, and now proposes
in September - this month - to offer for tender territories in the
proposed reserve for oil development.  Given the history of behavior
of Russian oil companies there is little doubt that development in
these areas would destroy the rivers and the Khanty whose lives and
culture depend on them.
 
I am passing along to you a letter of protest from the leader of the
Yugan Khanty community, Vladimir S. Kogonchin,  to the governor of
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Alexander V. Filipenko.
 
PLEASE take a few minutes to support the Khanty resistance to this
action by FAXing a letter of protest from your organization to
directly to Filipenko
at (7 34671) 3 34 60.
Forward this message to others who can respond.
 
TIME IS VERY SHORT.

--Andrew Wiget
 
---------------
Dear Alexander Vassilevich [Filipenko]:
 
The national community Yaoun Yakh, on behalf of the native population
of Yugan Khanty,categorically protests against putting on tender the
territories of Achimovskaya, Gustorechinskoye, and Ai-Yagunskoye oil
deposits. The development of these deposits is endangering the
existence of Yugan Khanty, because it deprives them of their natural
resource base and threatens the ecological situation in the basin of
the rivers B. And M. Yugan.
 
Beginning in 1989, the community of Yuganskii Khanty have been raising
the question of establishing a protected ethnoecological zone in this
area, which would be the only one in Surgut region.  The Yugan is the
only area in Surgut region not seriously impacted by industrial
development, where still exists the Khanty traditional cultural
formation, the Yugan Khanty.  At present there is a
scientifically-based project of establishing such a territory with the
status of Biosphere reserve, which could preserve this zone as part of
the cultural and natural heritage of Russia.  We ask you not to let
the above-named oil deposits to be put on tender and to speed up the
resolution of the question of establishing a protected territory of
regional significance with the structure of Biosphere Reserve.
 
V. S. Kogonchin
President, National Community "Yaoun Yakh"

-- 
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