Translated material
A place in the sun
The Gorno-Altai Nature Reserve is fighting against the invasion of private owners
One of the most beautiful places in Russia - Lake Teletskoye and the Altai State Nature Reserve, included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List - was on the verge of plunder. As Vremya Novostei learned, Rosprirodnadzor recently conducted an inspection of the reserve, which became the subject of a long-term conflict between the leadership of the Altai Mountains Republic and the director of the reserve, Vyacheslav Tregubovich.This reserve is a place of pilgrimage for tourists from all over the world, and therefore is very attractive to entrepreneurs who, without obtaining official permission from the authorities, have unauthorizedly built up the coast of Lake Teletskoye with tourist centers. At the initiative of Mr. Tregubovich, the arbitration courts declared all these buildings illegal and gave permission for their demolition. At the same time, the government of the republic accused the director of the reserve of a huge number of violations, and the law enforcement agencies of the republic - the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs - even initiated criminal cases against him. However, Rosprirodnadzor employees not only did not have any complaints against the director of the reserve, but, on the contrary, they recognized him as one of the few who are fighting to preserve the unique place. At the same time, Rosprirodnadzor has claims specifically against law enforcement agencies, which have not yet taken any measures to comply with environmental legislation.
The Altai State Reserve is considered one of the largest and richest reserves in Russia - with an area of more than 880 thousand hectares, it preserves about one and a half thousand rare plants, 15 species of fish, 9 species of amphibians and reptiles, 311 species of birds, 70 species of mammals, and a variety of landscapes. Lake Teletskoye is the second largest after Lake Baikal, it is located high in the mountains, completely covered with taiga, and the water temperature in it does not rise above 10 degrees even in summer. And if the northern part of the lake is accessible to tourists, then its eastern coast is given over to a nature reserve and the nature there remains pristine for thousands of years.
Or rather, it keeps it for now. Since 1991, the authorities of the Altai Mountains Republic have been seeking to change the status of the reserve, turning it into a national natural park, in order to exercise power on its territory themselves. The Ministry of Natural Resources did not support this idea, but in 1994 local authorities managed to remove about two hectares of land from the reserve without approval from the ministry and the federal government. And since 1996, the construction of commercial tourist centers and roads began in the reserve, again without approval from the Ministry of Natural Resources and without conducting a state environmental assessment.
Vyacheslav Tregubovich was appointed director of the reserve at the end of 2003 and began his activities by conducting an inspection of the reserve. Having discovered that none of the tourist centers on Lake Teletskoye had permits, the director approached them with a demand for demolition, but was refused. Countless appeals on this matter to the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not help either; there was no response to them. Instead, the prosecutor's office became interested in the personality of the director himself and in November 2005 opened a criminal case against him under Art. 119 of the Criminal Code - threat of murder. The reason for this was the statement of the director of the Taiga Bay tourist center Valery Vagin.
“Taiga Bay” is located in one of the most beautiful places of the lake, on its southeastern coast, where many officials of the Altai Mountains Republic and other Russian regions vacationed. As Vyacheslav Tregubovich told Vremya Novostei, he actually came to Vagin, but not with threats, but with a proposal to give the illegally built base to the state with reimbursement of the funds invested in it by the entrepreneur from the budget, otherwise he promised to achieve its demolition. According to Mr. Tregubovich, the director refused his proposal, and therefore the head of the reserve applied to the arbitration court with an application for the demolition of the illegal building. “And immediately the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case against me,” said Mr. Tregubovich. “At the same time, I was not called in for questioning, I was not even charged, and the court returned the case to the prosecutor’s office to eliminate numerous violations.” By the way, it was never possible to bring this case to fruition, and today the statute of limitations on it has expired. According to the director of the reserve, representatives of the republic's prosecutor's office have repeatedly announced the initiation of criminal cases against him, but all of them were closed at the level of pre-investigation checks.
The situation around the Gorno-Altai nature reserve became increasingly tense, and the situation became truly criminal. Thus, already at the beginning of the inspection carried out on the initiative of the director of the reserve in April 2004, his deputy, the chairman of the inventory commission, Yulia Zakharchenko, was killed. The killer was caught and convicted - he turned out to be an employee of the environmental education department of the reserve, Yuri Golovanov. True, the prosecutor’s office did not see any connection between the woman’s murder and her professional activities, and considered “personal hostility” to be the motive for the crime. In April of this year, an attempt was made on the life of the deputy director of the reserve, Vladimir Trulyaev - three unknown people broke into his house, began to beat him, and then, throwing a rope around his neck, tried to strangle him. Only by a miracle did he manage to escape - thanks to the fact that a random passer-by saw what was happening and raised the alarm. The attackers were detained, but then all of them were released for unknown reasons. And this summer, unknown persons blew up two boats belonging to the reserve and set its office on fire. These crimes also still remain unsolved.
“On June 11, at the direction of the head of the republic, Alexander Berdnikov, the republican riot police arrived on the territory of the reserve and checked our state inspectors “for involvement in an organized criminal group.” This is what the deputy prosecutor of the republic, Sergei Shukhin, who headed the investigation, told us,” says Vyacheslav Tregubovich.
At the end of June, the governor of the Altai Mountains, Berdnikov, addressed the Minister of Natural Resources, Yuri Trutnev, with another proposal to change the status of the Altai nature reserve to a “national natural park,” and also demanded the resignation of director Tregubovich, since he allegedly did not implement “any of the recommendations of Rosprirodnadzor.” The head of the republic also stated that “facts of poaching by employees of the reserve” were discovered and Tregubovich “deliberately aggravates the situation by attracting security services from Novosibirsk to protect the reserve.”
Rosprirodnadzor sent a special commission to the reserve to verify these facts. And the other day she submitted her report to the Ministry of Natural Resources. As Vremya Novostey learned, some violations were still discovered by the inspection, but all of them were the result of a negligent attitude towards the reserve on the part of Tregubovich’s predecessors. He himself was characterized as “a person who is certainly passionate about his work, sincerely wants to preserve the nature of the Altai Mountains, devoted to the ideas of the reserve, distinguished by his integrity and uncompromisingness in matters of environmental legislation.” By the way, the “private security from Novosibirsk” turned out to be only students of Novosibirsk universities and colleges, whom Mr. Tregubovich actually recruited to guard the reserve.
“Indeed, the problem in the Altai Nature Reserve is extremely serious, and we are trying to support Vyacheslav Tregubovich as best we can,” Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor, told Vremya Novostey. “Criminal cases are even brought against him, but his main problem is that he is trying to comply with the law.” And I, in turn, will try to do everything to prevent the reserve from passing into private hands. The audit did not find any serious violations in Tregubovich’s actions, as the leaders of the republic spoke about. Our problem is that we cannot help him in any way with local law enforcement agencies, who have been trying to open a number of criminal cases against him for quite some time, and their zeal is growing as the number of demolished camp sites increases. And although the prosecutor's office should be checking compliance with environmental legislation in the reserve, it strives for only one thing - to punish Tregubovich. But not only do we have no complaints against him, I even have a desire to send him to the Curonian Spit for three or four months (a nature reserve in the Kaliningrad region - Ed. ), there is also a problem with illegal construction, which the authorities of the reserve condone.”
According to decisions of the arbitration courts of Gorny Altai, one after another, tourist centers are recognized as illegal buildings and are gradually demolished, including the “Taiga Bay”. However, Vyacheslav Tregubovich seriously fears that this will not continue for long. “For several years now, I and several of my like-minded people, employees of the reserve, have been trying to resist the authorities of the republic, together with law enforcement agencies. But if they succeed in getting their way and I am removed from office, then the reserve will be given over to private owners for plunder. But it belongs to the whole country and to all of us, and we are simply obliged to preserve it for posterity,” says the director of the reserve.