Informant38

Forest makes up 70% of Russia's territory and spans 12 time zones.
A plan by the Kremlin which would allow Moscow to sell off the 843m hectares of Russia's forests to private logging companies has raised fears of an ecological disaster.
Ω{843million hectares=2,083 million acres
or, roughly, well over 2 billion acres of forest}
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Andrei Ptichnikov, forest coordinator of the World Wildlife Fund, Russia, said: "Russia has 22% of the forest on earth - a very important part of climate stability and global biodiversity because of all the rare species that live there. According to some estimates, Russian forests absorb 15% of the world's carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide. It provides a huge amount of oxygen for not just Europe, but the world."
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The new law however gives any private company the chance to buy the forest land outright, or to have use of it for up to 99 years and then buy it. The government hopes it will be approved by parliament by November 1.
A spokesman for Alexander Belyakov, head of the parliamentary committee on natural resources, which has to approve and refine the new law, insisted that if the forest is used properly, it should grow back to 80% its previous size.
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The far eastern leopard, of which there are only 30 left, the Siberian tiger, of which 400 remain, would all suffer from widespread logging.
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In Russia, logged wood sells for $1 (65p) a cubic metre, whereas it sells for $30 in Finland and $15 in Estonia. "Prices are cheaper, but there is also less money to keep the forest going," he said. "It is difficult to see how that can change. Forest companies do not want their prices to go up."
�Nick Paton Walsh/Guardian UK 09.19.03