http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/25/science/25ISLA.html
Japan and Russia Turn to Nature to Bridge Vast Chasm in the Sea
November 25, 2003
By JAMES BROOKE
TOKYO, Nov. 23 - Cranes, eagles and puffins have no trouble
crossing a 20-mile-wide finger of the Sea of Okhotsk that
separates two national parks, one Russian and one Japanese.
But the channel has long been a scary barrier for humans.
Now, in an exercise of green diplomacy, environmentalists
from both sides are proposing something untested in Asia, a
cross-border park.
It would span an archipelago of existing parks from the two
countries, linking the Shiretoko National Park on Hokkaido,
Japan's northernmost island, with a series of land and
marine reserves on four disputed southern islands in the
Kuriles, occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945.
A cross-border park would unite two radically different
environments. The Japanese side has been disfigured by a
pave-and-dam ethic. The Russian side has been largely left
alone, benefiting from benign neglect.
"The undeveloped Kurile Islands are a dream come true, from
a conservationist's standpoint, because they are
essentially the way northern Japan was before it was
transformed into farms, dams and shopping malls," reads the
Web site of Kurile Island Network, a Tokyo-based
conservation group that sponsored three days of workshops
to promote the idea.
"The younger generation are very much accepting," Noritaka
Ichida, a Japanese conservationist, said recently during a
break at the workshops. "But the older people still have
severe memories of Russia in World War II."
Sergei M. Smirenski, the director of Muraviovka Park for
Sustainable Land Use, which helps protect nesting cranes in
far eastern Russia, is less enthusiastic. "This stagnation
situation helps the wildlife," he said. "If the Japanese
come in we will lose this flora and fauna.
"This is the northern border for many species coming from
tropical areas," he went on. "But if you look down south
you don't find them because of development. The islands are
a very tiny part of the former big range, but the only
part."
The islands have become reservoirs for several bird species
on the verge of extinction in Hokkaido, including
Blakiston's fish owl, Steller's sea eagle, the tufted
puffin and the red-crowned crane.
Referring to the main island of the four-island group, Mr.
Ichida said: "Kunashiri is like Hokkaido 50 years ago.
There are old forests, where there has been no cutting.
There are no roads, so you have to go along the rivers."
For the last two decades, the Kurilski Nature Reserve has
protected about 60 percent of three of the contested
islands. Through cross-border cooperation, the Japanese say
they could contribute to reducing poaching and building up
stocks of species for reintroduction into Hokkaido.
"If you ask the Russian people if they are for or against
joint conservation management and research, 102 percent
would be for," said Valentin Ilyashenko, a Russian
Environment Ministry official who has worked on Kunashiri.
"If you ask the Russian people if they would like to see
sister parks, across borders, 102 percent would be for."
Ever since Americans and Canadians set up the world's first
border park in 1932, joining a stretch of the Rocky
Mountains in Montana and Alberta, about 150 cross-border
parks have been established, largely in Africa, Europe and
the Americas.
In Asia, where peace treaties and formal free-trade pacts
are rare, environmentalists are also proposing a "peace
park" for the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
Similar to the Bering Strait, the Russia-Japan border area
is an economic backwater, stagnating at the far ends of two
very long national lines.
Along the Russia-Alaska border, the Beringia Heritage
International Park has led to frequent international
exchanges among native communities, joint monitoring of
polar bears and walruses, and flickers of economic life.
"On the Russian side, they are giving guided tours, running
little bed and breakfasts, and small boat operations that
take people up and down the coast," Peter A. Richter,
Beringia program manager for the National Park Service,
said at the seminar here.
Now, Russia's bureaucracy, suspicion of outsiders and
corruption, limits Kurile tourism to a small trickle. David
Wolman, a Fulbright scholar from California, says he gave
up last summer when the demand for a bribe stood between
him and the 90-minute propeller flight from Sakhalin to
Yuzhno-Kurilsk, the regional capital.
"Getting to the islands is a logistical labyrinth wrapped
in record quantities of red tape," he wrote in an e-mail
message. "If you don't have lots of money for permits,
bribes, plane tickets, drivers and a mandatory Russian
escort, not to mention lots of time for weather delays,
it's probably not even worth trying."
Here Russian corruption and bureaucracy play into the hands
of Japanese officials who fear validation of Russian rule
in every visit by a non-Russian to the southern Kuriles,
known here as the Northern Territories.
"It is difficult for the Japanese government to simply say
yes to this kind of cross-border environmental park
project," said Toyohisa Kozuki, a Russia expert at Japan's
Foreign Ministry. "The project needs deep study to make
sure it will not compromise our position on the islands."
But others, noting that wildlife know no national
boundaries, say cooperation on conservation can ease human
tensions.
"The islands are basically untouched, in pristine
condition, and would make an ideal peace park, a friendship
park," William Van Reit, an executive of Peace Parks
Foundation, a private group, said on a visit here from his
office in Cape Town. Noting that there are 22 cross-border
parks in southern Africa, he said, "These areas become
little laboratories of international cooperation, regional
peace and stability."