Native Population Needs Natural Resources

VLADIVOSTOK. 13 October. VOSTOK-MEDIA. Native-born population of the North, Siberia, Far East and the United Nations Organization celebrated 15 years of cooperation. Nowadays, the problem still exists: there is no legislature for traditional nature management of indigenous people.
At the International Conference in Khabarovsk on October, 9-11, UN speakers paid their attention to recently achieved successes while their counterparts from Russia – mainly to problems that still exist. In Khabarovsk today indigenous people are under governmental protection, there are special natural culture centres.
Life of native population is tightened at the natural resources. Nanaitzi and ulchi are dependent on fish supply. By this moment, there has become less fish in the rivers and oceans; moreover, it has become dangerous to take it as food. Thus, illness rate among natives are higher than in the rest of Russia. Udegeitzi need forests to hunt the animals and pick up berries and mushrooms. Evenki are involved into deer bite and they need pastures.
WWF is trying to create a special zone of wild nature for natives to live and hunt in. More than that, the Bikin river in Primorskiy Krai is known as an area of Amur tiger. But native population has a tradition to protect the Amur tiger; it is honoured as the king of taiga. People think that tiger maintains natural balance in the world.
Official papers to establish a special area native population inhabitation is still in the process of adoption. As Yuriy Darman, the director of the Russian branch of WWF, says, these 15 years are the years of controversy between authorities and native population’s representatives. At the Russian Far East there are still no special areas of native people inhabitation. It is of vital importance to establish such zones as it is land where their ancestors lived and now they live on. They are the children of nature. And they still do not have a right to preserve their own land and resources.