In Russia’s Primorsky region the sun rises over what seems like endless forest. But in Dalnerechinsk, 500km north of Vladivostok it's disappearing at a catastrophic rate. Loggers are finding ways to outsmart the system as they cut down the forests. The re

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature makes regular trips to help local rangers do what little they can to stop the logging.

Primorsky region

In a nature reserve where only sanitary logging of diseased trees is allowed, according to law not a single berry can be picked. But loggers use their sanitary logging permit to cut down absolutely healthy trees and sell the profitable timber over the border in China.

Misused permits are just part of the problem, as thousands of trees are being cut down with no permits at all.

There are not more than 40 Amur leopards left on the planet and with each saw that makes its way through the forests, more of its prey will disappear, and extinction will be inevitable. If logging isn't stopped in the region, one of the rarest cats on earth could vanish forever.

Meanwhile, according to Irina Belim, the project coordinator from the Phoenix Fund, non-government organisations in the region are carrying out a number of ecological

Amur leopard

“According to estimates, probably 1 million cubic metres of the most valuable timber is stolen and exported to China every year,” said Denis Smirnov, the head of the forest programme of the WWF. “I think that only a dozen people in the field really take care of the forests,”  he noted.

Aleksandr Velikanov, a journalist with a Vladivistok newspaper, said that the problem of poaching is very big. “Everybody knows about the crime, but the crime is still going on,” he said. “I think while the social situation in the region is like it is today, nothing will change because those people who live in these forest communities just don’t have other workplaces.”