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Eurasian Geography and Economics

ISSN 1538-7216 (Print) 1938-2863 (Online) Journal homepage httpwwwtandfonlinecomloirege20

Illegal recreational hunting in Russia the role ofsocial norms and elite violators

Kathleen Braden

To cite this article Kathleen Braden (2014) Illegal recreational hunting in Russia the roleof social norms and elite violators Eurasian Geography and Economics 555 457-490 DOI1010801538721620151020320

To link to this article httpdxdoiorg1010801538721620151020320

Published online 08 Apr 2015

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Illegal recreational hunting in Russia the role of social norms andelite violators

Kathleen Braden

School of Business Government and Economics Seattle Pacific University Suite 201 SeattleWA 98119 USA

(Received 15 September 2014 accepted 13 February 2015)

Poaching in Russia has been reported to be of catastrophic proportions and threatensmaintenance of biodiversity Management of game species has stabilized some num-bers but both endangered species listed in the Russian Red Book and animals tradi-tionally viewed as hunting prey are diminishing in some regions Rank-and-filehunters increasingly shut off from access to hunting grounds have expressed a nega-tive reaction to new hunting regulations adopted by the Russian government in 2012While high-profile poaching incidents by so-called ldquoVIP huntersrdquo do not apparentlymake up a large portion of cases the symbolism of the alleged crimes has a deroga-tory impact on ordinary hunters because lawlessness is reinforced by perceptions ofimpunity for elite poachers

Keywords Russia hunting poaching wildlife crime power elite

The wild boar are disappearing everywhere as well as the hunters themselves hellip (Shalygin2014)

Introduction wildlife poaching in the context of Russian environmentalmanagement

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics drew the worldrsquos attention to issues of environmentalmanagement in Russia The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology (MNR)released its 2013 report on the status of the environment calling in part for stricter mea-sures of accountability for those who violated norms (MNR 2013) Scholars haveexplored the link between environmental damage in Russia and crime corruption andthe need to build a stronger civil society (Feldman 2012 Feldman and Blokov 2009Stoecker and Shakirova 2013) Russian judicial scholar Sverdyukov (2014) noted thatthe most numerous cases of environmental crime those ldquomaking up the majority of allregistered ecological crimesrdquo involve illegal taking of wildlife and forest resources(158) Newell and Simeone (2014 40 49ndash51) have likewise verified the destruction ofRussian forests driven by patterns in the global market and attributable largely to ldquoun-regulatedrdquo harvest of timber and corruption in government agencies

In this paper I examine illegal recreational hunting in Russia as an environmentalcrime Sergey Donskoy head of MNR noted in an interview (Smolrsquoyakova 2013) thatthe monetary value in Russia of poached wildlife in 2012 was estimated to be 18 billionrubles while legitimate hunting profits were 162 billion (authorrsquos note at the December

Email kbradenspuedu

copy 2015 Taylor amp Francis

Eurasian Geography and Economics 2014Vol 55 No 5 457ndash490 httpdxdoiorg1010801538721620151020320

2012 exchange rate reflecting ruble value at the time the figures would be US $576million and US $518 million correspondingly) The Russian Government recognized thethreat to wildlife in 2012 by adopting new regulations with stricter enforcement andhigher penalties and in 2014 adopted a strategic plan through the year 2030 to improvethe sustainability of the hunting economy (MNR 2014)

The investigation presented here is a survey of material gleaned from the Russianpress government reports environmental organizations and social media forums thatexpress concerns of recreational hunters over the new laws and trends in designation ofhunting lands underscoring a perception that rank-and-file hunters are excluded increas-ingly from resources An analysis of these sources suggests that continued impunity bythe power elite who violate hunting regulations and suffer little consequences may seri-ously undermine societal adherence to the new legal regime

The general public is exposed to violations by ldquoVIP huntersrdquo (a term used frequentlyin Russian media see Popova 2011) via reports online in newspapers on broadcastnews and even by the poachers themselves who sometimes place videos of their actionson YouTube For example in December 2012 a petition from residents in the LysyeGory region of Saratov Oblastrsquo was directed to Vladimir Putin complaining of poachingby named local court officials and stating in part ldquohellip we consider such behavior a signof lawlessness and a feudal system hellip It is not acceptable that in our forest reservespoaching occurs even more so by such high-placed personsrdquo (FreeNews Volga 2013)

For his part Vladimir Putin has emphasized his love of wilderness and nature con-servation in Russia through public appearances and even during interviews with thewestern press (Young 2011) These images of Putin-the-outdoorsman follow from a longnarrative of Russian leaders who fish and hunt fitting the idea of nastoyashchiye muz-hiki (ldquoreal guysrdquo a concept discussed in detail below) When applying this masculineimage of power to the new laws on hunting four propositions emerge

(1) Recreational hunters argue that they are facing increased monopolistic control ofhunting land and game resources by a high-income elite Moving to privatizedentrepreneurial management of game resources could be inhibited if people per-ceive restricted entry that is stacked against non-VIP actors

(2) Flaws in the structure of new hunting regulations adopted by the Duma in 2012may decrease their effectiveness in reducing poaching Additionally regulationsat the local or regional level are often unclear to hunters who try to equate themwith the federal system

(3) While damage to game population management may be the outcome of impu-nity by VIP hunters I suggest that the more serious impact may be reinforcingperceptions of general lawlessness in Russian society

(4) Normative expectations of behavior should be evaluated in any assessment of aneffective management regime for wildlife conservation More stringent laws maybe undermined if economic and civil penalties are perceived as applied dispro-portionately to lower income less powerful violators

Background The literature on ldquogreen criminalityrdquo and poaching

Wildlife poaching is increasingly treated as a serious crime recognized as such by theFebruary 2014 London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade hosted by the governmentof the United Kingdom (Brashares et al 2014 Coghlan 2014 CNN July 24 2014

458 K Braden

Government of the United Kingdom 2014) While such attention to so-called ldquogreencriminalityrdquo is welcomed by the international community methodology on actual moni-toring of such crimes remains elusive A complement to economic and jurisdictionalapproaches to green crime monitoring is in the realm of social norms and cultural con-texts

Thus the literature survey here is an initial glimpse at motivation for poaching par-ticularly when examining illegal taking of wildlife not for economic gain but to expresspower through impunity Precedents for this focus exist in other geographic contextsfor example Eliason (2004) drawing upon field interviews examined motivations forpoaching in the case of hunters in the state of Kentucky A sociological analysis in theUnited States was conducted by Forsyth and Marckese (1993) who noted that excite-ment and the desire to ldquooutsmartrdquo game wardens explained the behaviors of the subjectsinterviewed Similarly research has been done on motivations for poaching in lowincome rural communities of the former USSR in the case of saiga antelope (Kuumlhlet al 2009) Alexander Bondarev head of World Wide Fund for Naturersquos Altay-Sayanregional office also examined motivation and argued that that the high rate of regionalunemployment may contribute to local poaching problems (World Wide Fund forNature-Russia 2014b) Illegal hunting related to subsistence livelihoods and the generaldecline of rural communities in Russia does bear further exploration (Makarova 2014ch 3 South and Wyatt 2011 Wyatt 2009) but the continued prevalence of high-profilecases by elite power actors suggests that examination of social norms and attitudes ofboth ordinary hunters and so-called ldquoVIP huntersrdquo toward illegal activities would be ofvalue to evaluate the effectiveness of the new hunting regulations

Implications of these propositions extend far beyond the realm of game manage-ment Results of the investigation below demonstrate the conclusion by Feldman andBlokov (2009) in their work on promoting an environmental civil society in Russia thatattitudinal hurdles can be as important as legal and political obstacles to achieve animproved environmental ethic They note

the rise of ldquoenvironmental crimerdquo defined as cases of public or private malfeasance andornegligence that is technically prosecutable under the law but has in fact been difficult toprosecute ndash has increased dramatically in recent years This may help explain our surveyfinding that regulatory bodies and courts are viewed as relatively ineffective (737)

Even sophisticated transborder wildlife supply chains begin at the local level thereforeenvironmental and governmental agencies have embraced community involvement orcommunity-based policing But methods that may be effective in one geographic con-text such as cases of wildlife destruction in African states may not necessarily transferto the Russian setting In her dissertation for the Saratov Judicial Institute Bratashova(2011) examined green crime associated with wildlife in Russia and concluded that lawsperceived as too lax did indeed contribute to the growing problem but she also con-cluded that understanding the characteristics of the crimes was important to strengthenthe laws The WWF-Russia conducted a study of reported animal and fish poachingcases from the year 2000ndash2010 and determined that 5 percent of cases involved accusedchinovniki (government officials) another 25ndash35 percent were low-income rural peopleand the remainder were those engaged in commercial illegal activities Despite theactual data the report noted that the general public perceived the portion of cases byaccused government officials to be much higher (Polyanskaya 2013)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 459

Von Essen et al (2014 9ndash10) have suggested that the phenomenon of poachingmay be deconstructed to a typology of activities and that past emphasis on utility maxi-mization models may be less useful than understanding a normative perspective of whatmotivates a poacher The fields of social psychology and criminal psychology used bythese researchers aid in the analysis of the normative perspective by looking at social-ization and deviant behaviors within cultures The typology of illegal hunting created byVon Essen et al includes livelihood crime folk crime and sociopolitical crime Such atypology approach may be extended in the Russian context to create a framework ofmotivation for poaching

(1) Organized criminal activity and trans-border crime This is causing the greatestloss of biodiversity in Russia and receives the most publicity in the Russian andinternational press The motivation is utility maximization in the sense of pureeconomic profit Notorious cases involve poaching of endangered iconic speciessuch as Siberian tigers snow leopards and Amur leopards bears for bile trademusk deer for illegal perfume ingredients birds of prey for falconry sturgeonfrom the Volga for caviar and fish stocks in Kamchatka These crimes havereceived considerable attention from enforcement agencies of international trea-ties such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Speciesof Wild Fauna and Flora) as well as from environmental organizations (Homes2004 Theile 2003) and scholars (Beitman 2013 Ishigeyev and Bondar 2013Reeve 2006 South and Wyatt 2011 Wyatt 2009) WWF-Russia and TradeRecords Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce pressured the RussianGovernment to tighten fines for illegal taking of wildlife resulting in the new2012 legislation with vastly increased financial penalties for those convicted ofpoaching endangered species and conducting trans-border trade (Traffic Interna-tional 2013) Prison terms up to seven years and fines up to two million rublesnow can be imposed on people caught poaching tigers in Russia

(2) Foreign trophy hunters and hunting ecotourism With the fall of the USSR for-eign hunters purchasing guide services setup by Russian companies began toflood into the country for trophy hunting of big game such as bear and sheepThe sustainability of the activity is questioned because of huntersrsquo preferencesfor large males or rarity often upsetting the population dynamics of a herd(Palazy et al 2012) The proposition that commercial trophy hunting of animalslisted in the Russian Red Book of Endangered Species might be a fundraisingconservation tool has been challenged vigorously by environmental organiza-tions in Russia such as WWF-Russia Delisting Altay argali sheep (OvisAmmon) to permit their trophy hunting received negative press response(Novaya gazeta 2014) and was opposed by WWF-Russia and Greenpeace-Russia as well as other environmental organizations such as The Altai Project(Tekeyev 2014 The Altai Project 2014) The outcry caused the Russiangovernment to delay the idea at the time of this writing

(3) Hunting inspectors reserve guards or rangers border guards and other oppor-tunistic poachers Often the violators are the very people charged with preventingthe crime and this outcome seems to be motivated by economic pressure Issueshave been raised about the pay rate for inspectors the very large areas they areresponsible for and the diminished funding for nature reserve support by the Rus-sian Government (Braden 2008 Braden and Prudnikova 2008 Safonova 2007)The average salary per month for a reserve inspector in 2012 was equivalent to US

460 K Braden

$375 (Shalygin 2013b) Minister Sergey Donskoy reported in 2012 that there were3500 inspectors on duty throughout Russian hunting grounds averaging 450000hectares each (Smolrsquoyakova 2013) By comparison the US Bureau of LaborStatistics reported that in 2013 there were 6640 fish and game wardens employedin the United States with an average monthly wage 11 times higher than the aver-age in Russia (United States Department of Labor 2013)

(4) VIP hunters among the Russian power elite or wealthy South and Wyatt (2011)noted personal communication in 2007 from representatives at Phoenix a Russiannon-governmental organization (NGO) stating ldquoanother category of poachers isthose people who are not rich but that they have some protected position or knowsomeone For example a chief of police or a prosecutor knows that there will notbe any sanctions against them because of their position in societyrdquo (547)

The terms used in the Russian media for such illegal recreational hunting arechernoye safari (black safari Racheva 2009) tikhaya okhota (quiet hunt) andtsarskaya okhota (Tsarist hunting Zaitseva 2013) Elitist disregard for the bound-aries of nature reserves or hunting norms has been a long tradition dating back toSoviet times as documented by Zersquoev Wolfson in his 1980 exposeacute of environmen-tal crises (Komarov 1980 75ndash90) Many of the problems he outlined appear simi-lar to complaints about poachers in the current period lax enforcement lack ofsufficient number of inspectors courts that look the other way and impunity bypolitical elite

(5) Non-elite hunters The new hunting regulations make special provision forindigenous communities that have traditionally hunted for subsistence but manyrural people of Russian heritage have by necessity supplemented protein throughhunting1

Additionally both rural and urban Russians hunt for recreation The bulk of arrestsfines and prosecutions for illegal hunting has been attributed to violations by such hun-ters who do not fall into the high income or power elite category

Biologist Makarova (2014) analyzed a database of over 300000 violations of wild-life laws in Russia from 1999 to 2005 and drew conclusions about the type of peoplewho most often are apprehended (19) She noted that a decline in citations paralleledthe decline of rural populations in Russia a phenomenon also examined by Ioffe Nefe-dova and others in terms of land abandonment and overall impoverished economies inthe countryside (Ioffe Nefedova and De Beurs 2012 Ioffe Nefedova and Zaslavsky2006) Makarova (2014) found in her analysis that many of the poachers were peoplewho had licenses or belonged to hunting clubs and therefore growth of the phenomenonin Russia must be due to increased violations by existing poachers rather than ldquonewrecruitsrdquo into the ranks of poachers (66) She also discussed the assumption that povertyis a main cause of poaching and indeed found a higher number of cases in areas thathad experienced economic shocks

Methods value and limitations of social and advocacy media as a data source

While empirical evidence collected by experts noted above reveals that most poachingcases of recreational game are by local actors surveys suggest that the perception of theRussian public holds a relatively small group of elite violators responsible for the major-ity of cases

Eurasian Geography and Economics 461

A clue to understanding this dissonance may be found in a 2011 article by ViktorGurov a hunter and ranger who discussed his attempt to appreciate the motivation ofpeople caught poaching After many interviews with people he apprehended Gurovdecided there were three types of poachers (1) people pushed to the action by ldquomaterialor spiritualrdquo poverty (2) professional commercial poachers who are very arrogant andlooking out for their customers and (3) the powerful elite called by Gurov the bespre-delschiki (those without limits) who view themselves as above the law do not worryabout getting caught and are motivated by the ldquosweetness of forbidden fruitrdquo (Gurov2011) The author goes on to make recommendations to fight poachers in Russia andnotes that officials who are caught poaching and avoid responsibility just encourageordinary hunters to think ldquoif they can why not merdquo Elite violations therefore mayhave an impact far beyond the mere scope of the crimes themselves if the public feelsdiscouraged about upholding legal regimes for sustainable recreational hunting practices

I collected information sources to ascertain perceptions about poachers from socialand press media resulting in a largely anecdotal database based on the Russian textsSources of information included

bull Web-based Russian hunting journals for popular audiencesbull Web-based blogs and forums for rank-and-file huntersbull Advocacy web sites by environmental organizationsbull Press articles reporting alleged violations by elite poachers and public commentsreacting to such incidents

Most material was gleaned from publications dating from 2010 to 2014 but in somecases citations were made to earlier articles or press reports Often anecdotes werereported in multiple sources and I made efforts to track reports to the originalpublication

As in all literature surveys limitations of this method involve incorrect interpreta-tions of perceptions expressed in the Russian text the potential for bias in choice ofmaterials and self-selection of those who comment in online forums Because I wasinterested in reactions of hunters comments and blogs were surveyed at times resultingin vernacular jargon that required care to interpret This survey of social and pressmedia serves only as a starting point and a fruitful next step for analysis would bethrough questionnaire surveys such as Urbanrsquos (2010) research on attitudes of the elitein Russia or Eliasonrsquos (2004) on poachers in the United States

Russian legal regime for hunting2

Although hunting has long been a tradition in Russia for all social classes the numberof registered hunters in Russia has declined from 45 million in the 1980s to 28 millionin 2012 (Kuzenkov 2011 Smolrsquoyakova 2013) Registered adult hunters in Russia wereabout 196 percent of the population in 2012 versus 444 percent in the United States(United States Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011) this despite the fact that 80 percent of allland in Russia is designated as hunting land while in the United States it is 534percent (Table 1 Allen 2014 Kuzenkov 2011)

Historically hunting grounds in Russia were controlled in part by wealthy landown-ers and the nobility but up until the 1917 revolution rights to hunt on private landswere usually granted to lower social classes (Gamov 2014) Traditions such as huntingwith dogs and falconry entered Russia via the upper classes and were often portrayed in

462 K Braden

Russian art in an idealized form such as Vasiliy Perovrsquos famous 1871 painting Okhot-niki na privalye (Hunters at Rest) National leaders from tsarist to Soviet periods wereshown hunting in published photographs (Figure 1)

With the advent of the Soviet regime hunting clubs became more widespread andall hunting lands belonged to the state at the national or local level The governmentagency Glavokhota (Main Administration for Hunting and Zapovedniki-Reserves) hadauthority for regulation of both domestic and foreign hunters and hunting lands as wellas nature reserves (a good history of the organization may be found in Weiner [1999241ndash250] and a general history of hunting during Soviet times in Gamov [2014]) Theagency worked with some very large hunting unionsclubs often attached to police pro-fessions the railway sector or the military After the devolution of the Soviet Unionprivatization of hunting resources and growth of companies serving foreign trophy hun-ters began in earnest Some experts on hunting bemoan the post-Soviet developmentsValeriy Kuzenkov the editor of the journal Okhota in a 2010 interview noted ldquoNowboth our unified federal system for hunting oversight and our scientific and researchfacilities are in ruins hellip the country doesnrsquot have a unified and transparent system ofhunting oversightrdquo (Degtyarev 2010)

The changes to Glavokhota reflect many reorganization schemes for environmentalmanagement since the devolution of the Soviet Union The State Committee for Envi-ronmental Protection was abolished as far back as the year 2000 and many functionswere moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources (now the Ministry of NaturalResources and Ecology) of the Russian Federation the same bureaucracy responsiblefor drawing profits from exploitation of Russiarsquos resources Another source of complainthas been about the fact that Glavokhota had been connected to hunting inspectors andeducation to prevent poaching (Figure 2) whereas Gosokhotnadzor the agency

Table 1 United States and Russia hunting statistics 2011ndash2012

Russian Federation United States

Total hunting land mill ha 13660 5294as percent national area 8000 5390

private hunting lands mill ha 7380 2470percent of hunting land that is private 540 467

Number of hunters in 2012 2800000 13700000Hunters as percent total population 196 444Recreational expenditures on hunting mill US dollars $50000 $3370000Implied average expenditure per hunter US dollars $17857 $245985

Notes Russian Government estimates 15 billion ha are available for hunting almost 100 percent of nationalterritoryUS private hunting lands figures leased plus owned from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife survey Table 34US primarily measures huntersrsquo days on public or private lands by surveyExpenditures on Russian hunting from Smolrsquoyakova interview with DonskoyExpenditures on US hunting from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife report 22Sources Smolrsquoyakova (2013) Degtyarev (2010)Federal Statistics of Russian Federation httpwwwgksruwpswcmconnectrosstat_mainrosstatrustatisticsenterpriseeconomyDevelopment of Hunting Strategy in Russian Federation to 2030 3 July 2014 N 1216-p httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtmlUnited States Fish amp Wildlife Service (2011) National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-AssociatedRecreationBackcountry Chronicles est BLM USFS and state public lands available for hunting httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

Eurasian Geography and Economics 463

Government of the United Kingdom 2014) While such attention to so-called ldquogreencriminalityrdquo is welcomed by the international community methodology on actual moni-toring of such crimes remains elusive A complement to economic and jurisdictionalapproaches to green crime monitoring is in the realm of social norms and cultural con-texts

Thus the literature survey here is an initial glimpse at motivation for poaching par-ticularly when examining illegal taking of wildlife not for economic gain but to expresspower through impunity Precedents for this focus exist in other geographic contextsfor example Eliason (2004) drawing upon field interviews examined motivations forpoaching in the case of hunters in the state of Kentucky A sociological analysis in theUnited States was conducted by Forsyth and Marckese (1993) who noted that excite-ment and the desire to ldquooutsmartrdquo game wardens explained the behaviors of the subjectsinterviewed Similarly research has been done on motivations for poaching in lowincome rural communities of the former USSR in the case of saiga antelope (Kuumlhlet al 2009) Alexander Bondarev head of World Wide Fund for Naturersquos Altay-Sayanregional office also examined motivation and argued that that the high rate of regionalunemployment may contribute to local poaching problems (World Wide Fund forNature-Russia 2014b) Illegal hunting related to subsistence livelihoods and the generaldecline of rural communities in Russia does bear further exploration (Makarova 2014ch 3 South and Wyatt 2011 Wyatt 2009) but the continued prevalence of high-profilecases by elite power actors suggests that examination of social norms and attitudes ofboth ordinary hunters and so-called ldquoVIP huntersrdquo toward illegal activities would be ofvalue to evaluate the effectiveness of the new hunting regulations

Implications of these propositions extend far beyond the realm of game manage-ment Results of the investigation below demonstrate the conclusion by Feldman andBlokov (2009) in their work on promoting an environmental civil society in Russia thatattitudinal hurdles can be as important as legal and political obstacles to achieve animproved environmental ethic They note

the rise of ldquoenvironmental crimerdquo defined as cases of public or private malfeasance andornegligence that is technically prosecutable under the law but has in fact been difficult toprosecute ndash has increased dramatically in recent years This may help explain our surveyfinding that regulatory bodies and courts are viewed as relatively ineffective (737)

Even sophisticated transborder wildlife supply chains begin at the local level thereforeenvironmental and governmental agencies have embraced community involvement orcommunity-based policing But methods that may be effective in one geographic con-text such as cases of wildlife destruction in African states may not necessarily transferto the Russian setting In her dissertation for the Saratov Judicial Institute Bratashova(2011) examined green crime associated with wildlife in Russia and concluded that lawsperceived as too lax did indeed contribute to the growing problem but she also con-cluded that understanding the characteristics of the crimes was important to strengthenthe laws The WWF-Russia conducted a study of reported animal and fish poachingcases from the year 2000ndash2010 and determined that 5 percent of cases involved accusedchinovniki (government officials) another 25ndash35 percent were low-income rural peopleand the remainder were those engaged in commercial illegal activities Despite theactual data the report noted that the general public perceived the portion of cases byaccused government officials to be much higher (Polyanskaya 2013)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 459

Von Essen et al (2014 9ndash10) have suggested that the phenomenon of poachingmay be deconstructed to a typology of activities and that past emphasis on utility maxi-mization models may be less useful than understanding a normative perspective of whatmotivates a poacher The fields of social psychology and criminal psychology used bythese researchers aid in the analysis of the normative perspective by looking at social-ization and deviant behaviors within cultures The typology of illegal hunting created byVon Essen et al includes livelihood crime folk crime and sociopolitical crime Such atypology approach may be extended in the Russian context to create a framework ofmotivation for poaching

(1) Organized criminal activity and trans-border crime This is causing the greatestloss of biodiversity in Russia and receives the most publicity in the Russian andinternational press The motivation is utility maximization in the sense of pureeconomic profit Notorious cases involve poaching of endangered iconic speciessuch as Siberian tigers snow leopards and Amur leopards bears for bile trademusk deer for illegal perfume ingredients birds of prey for falconry sturgeonfrom the Volga for caviar and fish stocks in Kamchatka These crimes havereceived considerable attention from enforcement agencies of international trea-ties such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Speciesof Wild Fauna and Flora) as well as from environmental organizations (Homes2004 Theile 2003) and scholars (Beitman 2013 Ishigeyev and Bondar 2013Reeve 2006 South and Wyatt 2011 Wyatt 2009) WWF-Russia and TradeRecords Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce pressured the RussianGovernment to tighten fines for illegal taking of wildlife resulting in the new2012 legislation with vastly increased financial penalties for those convicted ofpoaching endangered species and conducting trans-border trade (Traffic Interna-tional 2013) Prison terms up to seven years and fines up to two million rublesnow can be imposed on people caught poaching tigers in Russia

(2) Foreign trophy hunters and hunting ecotourism With the fall of the USSR for-eign hunters purchasing guide services setup by Russian companies began toflood into the country for trophy hunting of big game such as bear and sheepThe sustainability of the activity is questioned because of huntersrsquo preferencesfor large males or rarity often upsetting the population dynamics of a herd(Palazy et al 2012) The proposition that commercial trophy hunting of animalslisted in the Russian Red Book of Endangered Species might be a fundraisingconservation tool has been challenged vigorously by environmental organiza-tions in Russia such as WWF-Russia Delisting Altay argali sheep (OvisAmmon) to permit their trophy hunting received negative press response(Novaya gazeta 2014) and was opposed by WWF-Russia and Greenpeace-Russia as well as other environmental organizations such as The Altai Project(Tekeyev 2014 The Altai Project 2014) The outcry caused the Russiangovernment to delay the idea at the time of this writing

(3) Hunting inspectors reserve guards or rangers border guards and other oppor-tunistic poachers Often the violators are the very people charged with preventingthe crime and this outcome seems to be motivated by economic pressure Issueshave been raised about the pay rate for inspectors the very large areas they areresponsible for and the diminished funding for nature reserve support by the Rus-sian Government (Braden 2008 Braden and Prudnikova 2008 Safonova 2007)The average salary per month for a reserve inspector in 2012 was equivalent to US

460 K Braden

$375 (Shalygin 2013b) Minister Sergey Donskoy reported in 2012 that there were3500 inspectors on duty throughout Russian hunting grounds averaging 450000hectares each (Smolrsquoyakova 2013) By comparison the US Bureau of LaborStatistics reported that in 2013 there were 6640 fish and game wardens employedin the United States with an average monthly wage 11 times higher than the aver-age in Russia (United States Department of Labor 2013)

(4) VIP hunters among the Russian power elite or wealthy South and Wyatt (2011)noted personal communication in 2007 from representatives at Phoenix a Russiannon-governmental organization (NGO) stating ldquoanother category of poachers isthose people who are not rich but that they have some protected position or knowsomeone For example a chief of police or a prosecutor knows that there will notbe any sanctions against them because of their position in societyrdquo (547)

The terms used in the Russian media for such illegal recreational hunting arechernoye safari (black safari Racheva 2009) tikhaya okhota (quiet hunt) andtsarskaya okhota (Tsarist hunting Zaitseva 2013) Elitist disregard for the bound-aries of nature reserves or hunting norms has been a long tradition dating back toSoviet times as documented by Zersquoev Wolfson in his 1980 exposeacute of environmen-tal crises (Komarov 1980 75ndash90) Many of the problems he outlined appear simi-lar to complaints about poachers in the current period lax enforcement lack ofsufficient number of inspectors courts that look the other way and impunity bypolitical elite

(5) Non-elite hunters The new hunting regulations make special provision forindigenous communities that have traditionally hunted for subsistence but manyrural people of Russian heritage have by necessity supplemented protein throughhunting1

Additionally both rural and urban Russians hunt for recreation The bulk of arrestsfines and prosecutions for illegal hunting has been attributed to violations by such hun-ters who do not fall into the high income or power elite category

Biologist Makarova (2014) analyzed a database of over 300000 violations of wild-life laws in Russia from 1999 to 2005 and drew conclusions about the type of peoplewho most often are apprehended (19) She noted that a decline in citations paralleledthe decline of rural populations in Russia a phenomenon also examined by Ioffe Nefe-dova and others in terms of land abandonment and overall impoverished economies inthe countryside (Ioffe Nefedova and De Beurs 2012 Ioffe Nefedova and Zaslavsky2006) Makarova (2014) found in her analysis that many of the poachers were peoplewho had licenses or belonged to hunting clubs and therefore growth of the phenomenonin Russia must be due to increased violations by existing poachers rather than ldquonewrecruitsrdquo into the ranks of poachers (66) She also discussed the assumption that povertyis a main cause of poaching and indeed found a higher number of cases in areas thathad experienced economic shocks

Methods value and limitations of social and advocacy media as a data source

While empirical evidence collected by experts noted above reveals that most poachingcases of recreational game are by local actors surveys suggest that the perception of theRussian public holds a relatively small group of elite violators responsible for the major-ity of cases

Eurasian Geography and Economics 461

A clue to understanding this dissonance may be found in a 2011 article by ViktorGurov a hunter and ranger who discussed his attempt to appreciate the motivation ofpeople caught poaching After many interviews with people he apprehended Gurovdecided there were three types of poachers (1) people pushed to the action by ldquomaterialor spiritualrdquo poverty (2) professional commercial poachers who are very arrogant andlooking out for their customers and (3) the powerful elite called by Gurov the bespre-delschiki (those without limits) who view themselves as above the law do not worryabout getting caught and are motivated by the ldquosweetness of forbidden fruitrdquo (Gurov2011) The author goes on to make recommendations to fight poachers in Russia andnotes that officials who are caught poaching and avoid responsibility just encourageordinary hunters to think ldquoif they can why not merdquo Elite violations therefore mayhave an impact far beyond the mere scope of the crimes themselves if the public feelsdiscouraged about upholding legal regimes for sustainable recreational hunting practices

I collected information sources to ascertain perceptions about poachers from socialand press media resulting in a largely anecdotal database based on the Russian textsSources of information included

bull Web-based Russian hunting journals for popular audiencesbull Web-based blogs and forums for rank-and-file huntersbull Advocacy web sites by environmental organizationsbull Press articles reporting alleged violations by elite poachers and public commentsreacting to such incidents

Most material was gleaned from publications dating from 2010 to 2014 but in somecases citations were made to earlier articles or press reports Often anecdotes werereported in multiple sources and I made efforts to track reports to the originalpublication

As in all literature surveys limitations of this method involve incorrect interpreta-tions of perceptions expressed in the Russian text the potential for bias in choice ofmaterials and self-selection of those who comment in online forums Because I wasinterested in reactions of hunters comments and blogs were surveyed at times resultingin vernacular jargon that required care to interpret This survey of social and pressmedia serves only as a starting point and a fruitful next step for analysis would bethrough questionnaire surveys such as Urbanrsquos (2010) research on attitudes of the elitein Russia or Eliasonrsquos (2004) on poachers in the United States

Russian legal regime for hunting2

Although hunting has long been a tradition in Russia for all social classes the numberof registered hunters in Russia has declined from 45 million in the 1980s to 28 millionin 2012 (Kuzenkov 2011 Smolrsquoyakova 2013) Registered adult hunters in Russia wereabout 196 percent of the population in 2012 versus 444 percent in the United States(United States Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011) this despite the fact that 80 percent of allland in Russia is designated as hunting land while in the United States it is 534percent (Table 1 Allen 2014 Kuzenkov 2011)

Historically hunting grounds in Russia were controlled in part by wealthy landown-ers and the nobility but up until the 1917 revolution rights to hunt on private landswere usually granted to lower social classes (Gamov 2014) Traditions such as huntingwith dogs and falconry entered Russia via the upper classes and were often portrayed in

462 K Braden

Russian art in an idealized form such as Vasiliy Perovrsquos famous 1871 painting Okhot-niki na privalye (Hunters at Rest) National leaders from tsarist to Soviet periods wereshown hunting in published photographs (Figure 1)

With the advent of the Soviet regime hunting clubs became more widespread andall hunting lands belonged to the state at the national or local level The governmentagency Glavokhota (Main Administration for Hunting and Zapovedniki-Reserves) hadauthority for regulation of both domestic and foreign hunters and hunting lands as wellas nature reserves (a good history of the organization may be found in Weiner [1999241ndash250] and a general history of hunting during Soviet times in Gamov [2014]) Theagency worked with some very large hunting unionsclubs often attached to police pro-fessions the railway sector or the military After the devolution of the Soviet Unionprivatization of hunting resources and growth of companies serving foreign trophy hun-ters began in earnest Some experts on hunting bemoan the post-Soviet developmentsValeriy Kuzenkov the editor of the journal Okhota in a 2010 interview noted ldquoNowboth our unified federal system for hunting oversight and our scientific and researchfacilities are in ruins hellip the country doesnrsquot have a unified and transparent system ofhunting oversightrdquo (Degtyarev 2010)

The changes to Glavokhota reflect many reorganization schemes for environmentalmanagement since the devolution of the Soviet Union The State Committee for Envi-ronmental Protection was abolished as far back as the year 2000 and many functionswere moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources (now the Ministry of NaturalResources and Ecology) of the Russian Federation the same bureaucracy responsiblefor drawing profits from exploitation of Russiarsquos resources Another source of complainthas been about the fact that Glavokhota had been connected to hunting inspectors andeducation to prevent poaching (Figure 2) whereas Gosokhotnadzor the agency

Table 1 United States and Russia hunting statistics 2011ndash2012

Russian Federation United States

Total hunting land mill ha 13660 5294as percent national area 8000 5390

private hunting lands mill ha 7380 2470percent of hunting land that is private 540 467

Number of hunters in 2012 2800000 13700000Hunters as percent total population 196 444Recreational expenditures on hunting mill US dollars $50000 $3370000Implied average expenditure per hunter US dollars $17857 $245985

Notes Russian Government estimates 15 billion ha are available for hunting almost 100 percent of nationalterritoryUS private hunting lands figures leased plus owned from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife survey Table 34US primarily measures huntersrsquo days on public or private lands by surveyExpenditures on Russian hunting from Smolrsquoyakova interview with DonskoyExpenditures on US hunting from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife report 22Sources Smolrsquoyakova (2013) Degtyarev (2010)Federal Statistics of Russian Federation httpwwwgksruwpswcmconnectrosstat_mainrosstatrustatisticsenterpriseeconomyDevelopment of Hunting Strategy in Russian Federation to 2030 3 July 2014 N 1216-p httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtmlUnited States Fish amp Wildlife Service (2011) National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-AssociatedRecreationBackcountry Chronicles est BLM USFS and state public lands available for hunting httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

Eurasian Geography and Economics 463

Von Essen et al (2014 9ndash10) have suggested that the phenomenon of poachingmay be deconstructed to a typology of activities and that past emphasis on utility maxi-mization models may be less useful than understanding a normative perspective of whatmotivates a poacher The fields of social psychology and criminal psychology used bythese researchers aid in the analysis of the normative perspective by looking at social-ization and deviant behaviors within cultures The typology of illegal hunting created byVon Essen et al includes livelihood crime folk crime and sociopolitical crime Such atypology approach may be extended in the Russian context to create a framework ofmotivation for poaching

(1) Organized criminal activity and trans-border crime This is causing the greatestloss of biodiversity in Russia and receives the most publicity in the Russian andinternational press The motivation is utility maximization in the sense of pureeconomic profit Notorious cases involve poaching of endangered iconic speciessuch as Siberian tigers snow leopards and Amur leopards bears for bile trademusk deer for illegal perfume ingredients birds of prey for falconry sturgeonfrom the Volga for caviar and fish stocks in Kamchatka These crimes havereceived considerable attention from enforcement agencies of international trea-ties such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Speciesof Wild Fauna and Flora) as well as from environmental organizations (Homes2004 Theile 2003) and scholars (Beitman 2013 Ishigeyev and Bondar 2013Reeve 2006 South and Wyatt 2011 Wyatt 2009) WWF-Russia and TradeRecords Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce pressured the RussianGovernment to tighten fines for illegal taking of wildlife resulting in the new2012 legislation with vastly increased financial penalties for those convicted ofpoaching endangered species and conducting trans-border trade (Traffic Interna-tional 2013) Prison terms up to seven years and fines up to two million rublesnow can be imposed on people caught poaching tigers in Russia

(2) Foreign trophy hunters and hunting ecotourism With the fall of the USSR for-eign hunters purchasing guide services setup by Russian companies began toflood into the country for trophy hunting of big game such as bear and sheepThe sustainability of the activity is questioned because of huntersrsquo preferencesfor large males or rarity often upsetting the population dynamics of a herd(Palazy et al 2012) The proposition that commercial trophy hunting of animalslisted in the Russian Red Book of Endangered Species might be a fundraisingconservation tool has been challenged vigorously by environmental organiza-tions in Russia such as WWF-Russia Delisting Altay argali sheep (OvisAmmon) to permit their trophy hunting received negative press response(Novaya gazeta 2014) and was opposed by WWF-Russia and Greenpeace-Russia as well as other environmental organizations such as The Altai Project(Tekeyev 2014 The Altai Project 2014) The outcry caused the Russiangovernment to delay the idea at the time of this writing

(3) Hunting inspectors reserve guards or rangers border guards and other oppor-tunistic poachers Often the violators are the very people charged with preventingthe crime and this outcome seems to be motivated by economic pressure Issueshave been raised about the pay rate for inspectors the very large areas they areresponsible for and the diminished funding for nature reserve support by the Rus-sian Government (Braden 2008 Braden and Prudnikova 2008 Safonova 2007)The average salary per month for a reserve inspector in 2012 was equivalent to US

460 K Braden

$375 (Shalygin 2013b) Minister Sergey Donskoy reported in 2012 that there were3500 inspectors on duty throughout Russian hunting grounds averaging 450000hectares each (Smolrsquoyakova 2013) By comparison the US Bureau of LaborStatistics reported that in 2013 there were 6640 fish and game wardens employedin the United States with an average monthly wage 11 times higher than the aver-age in Russia (United States Department of Labor 2013)

(4) VIP hunters among the Russian power elite or wealthy South and Wyatt (2011)noted personal communication in 2007 from representatives at Phoenix a Russiannon-governmental organization (NGO) stating ldquoanother category of poachers isthose people who are not rich but that they have some protected position or knowsomeone For example a chief of police or a prosecutor knows that there will notbe any sanctions against them because of their position in societyrdquo (547)

The terms used in the Russian media for such illegal recreational hunting arechernoye safari (black safari Racheva 2009) tikhaya okhota (quiet hunt) andtsarskaya okhota (Tsarist hunting Zaitseva 2013) Elitist disregard for the bound-aries of nature reserves or hunting norms has been a long tradition dating back toSoviet times as documented by Zersquoev Wolfson in his 1980 exposeacute of environmen-tal crises (Komarov 1980 75ndash90) Many of the problems he outlined appear simi-lar to complaints about poachers in the current period lax enforcement lack ofsufficient number of inspectors courts that look the other way and impunity bypolitical elite

(5) Non-elite hunters The new hunting regulations make special provision forindigenous communities that have traditionally hunted for subsistence but manyrural people of Russian heritage have by necessity supplemented protein throughhunting1

Additionally both rural and urban Russians hunt for recreation The bulk of arrestsfines and prosecutions for illegal hunting has been attributed to violations by such hun-ters who do not fall into the high income or power elite category

Biologist Makarova (2014) analyzed a database of over 300000 violations of wild-life laws in Russia from 1999 to 2005 and drew conclusions about the type of peoplewho most often are apprehended (19) She noted that a decline in citations paralleledthe decline of rural populations in Russia a phenomenon also examined by Ioffe Nefe-dova and others in terms of land abandonment and overall impoverished economies inthe countryside (Ioffe Nefedova and De Beurs 2012 Ioffe Nefedova and Zaslavsky2006) Makarova (2014) found in her analysis that many of the poachers were peoplewho had licenses or belonged to hunting clubs and therefore growth of the phenomenonin Russia must be due to increased violations by existing poachers rather than ldquonewrecruitsrdquo into the ranks of poachers (66) She also discussed the assumption that povertyis a main cause of poaching and indeed found a higher number of cases in areas thathad experienced economic shocks

Methods value and limitations of social and advocacy media as a data source

While empirical evidence collected by experts noted above reveals that most poachingcases of recreational game are by local actors surveys suggest that the perception of theRussian public holds a relatively small group of elite violators responsible for the major-ity of cases

Eurasian Geography and Economics 461

A clue to understanding this dissonance may be found in a 2011 article by ViktorGurov a hunter and ranger who discussed his attempt to appreciate the motivation ofpeople caught poaching After many interviews with people he apprehended Gurovdecided there were three types of poachers (1) people pushed to the action by ldquomaterialor spiritualrdquo poverty (2) professional commercial poachers who are very arrogant andlooking out for their customers and (3) the powerful elite called by Gurov the bespre-delschiki (those without limits) who view themselves as above the law do not worryabout getting caught and are motivated by the ldquosweetness of forbidden fruitrdquo (Gurov2011) The author goes on to make recommendations to fight poachers in Russia andnotes that officials who are caught poaching and avoid responsibility just encourageordinary hunters to think ldquoif they can why not merdquo Elite violations therefore mayhave an impact far beyond the mere scope of the crimes themselves if the public feelsdiscouraged about upholding legal regimes for sustainable recreational hunting practices

I collected information sources to ascertain perceptions about poachers from socialand press media resulting in a largely anecdotal database based on the Russian textsSources of information included

bull Web-based Russian hunting journals for popular audiencesbull Web-based blogs and forums for rank-and-file huntersbull Advocacy web sites by environmental organizationsbull Press articles reporting alleged violations by elite poachers and public commentsreacting to such incidents

Most material was gleaned from publications dating from 2010 to 2014 but in somecases citations were made to earlier articles or press reports Often anecdotes werereported in multiple sources and I made efforts to track reports to the originalpublication

As in all literature surveys limitations of this method involve incorrect interpreta-tions of perceptions expressed in the Russian text the potential for bias in choice ofmaterials and self-selection of those who comment in online forums Because I wasinterested in reactions of hunters comments and blogs were surveyed at times resultingin vernacular jargon that required care to interpret This survey of social and pressmedia serves only as a starting point and a fruitful next step for analysis would bethrough questionnaire surveys such as Urbanrsquos (2010) research on attitudes of the elitein Russia or Eliasonrsquos (2004) on poachers in the United States

Russian legal regime for hunting2

Although hunting has long been a tradition in Russia for all social classes the numberof registered hunters in Russia has declined from 45 million in the 1980s to 28 millionin 2012 (Kuzenkov 2011 Smolrsquoyakova 2013) Registered adult hunters in Russia wereabout 196 percent of the population in 2012 versus 444 percent in the United States(United States Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011) this despite the fact that 80 percent of allland in Russia is designated as hunting land while in the United States it is 534percent (Table 1 Allen 2014 Kuzenkov 2011)

Historically hunting grounds in Russia were controlled in part by wealthy landown-ers and the nobility but up until the 1917 revolution rights to hunt on private landswere usually granted to lower social classes (Gamov 2014) Traditions such as huntingwith dogs and falconry entered Russia via the upper classes and were often portrayed in

462 K Braden

Russian art in an idealized form such as Vasiliy Perovrsquos famous 1871 painting Okhot-niki na privalye (Hunters at Rest) National leaders from tsarist to Soviet periods wereshown hunting in published photographs (Figure 1)

With the advent of the Soviet regime hunting clubs became more widespread andall hunting lands belonged to the state at the national or local level The governmentagency Glavokhota (Main Administration for Hunting and Zapovedniki-Reserves) hadauthority for regulation of both domestic and foreign hunters and hunting lands as wellas nature reserves (a good history of the organization may be found in Weiner [1999241ndash250] and a general history of hunting during Soviet times in Gamov [2014]) Theagency worked with some very large hunting unionsclubs often attached to police pro-fessions the railway sector or the military After the devolution of the Soviet Unionprivatization of hunting resources and growth of companies serving foreign trophy hun-ters began in earnest Some experts on hunting bemoan the post-Soviet developmentsValeriy Kuzenkov the editor of the journal Okhota in a 2010 interview noted ldquoNowboth our unified federal system for hunting oversight and our scientific and researchfacilities are in ruins hellip the country doesnrsquot have a unified and transparent system ofhunting oversightrdquo (Degtyarev 2010)

The changes to Glavokhota reflect many reorganization schemes for environmentalmanagement since the devolution of the Soviet Union The State Committee for Envi-ronmental Protection was abolished as far back as the year 2000 and many functionswere moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources (now the Ministry of NaturalResources and Ecology) of the Russian Federation the same bureaucracy responsiblefor drawing profits from exploitation of Russiarsquos resources Another source of complainthas been about the fact that Glavokhota had been connected to hunting inspectors andeducation to prevent poaching (Figure 2) whereas Gosokhotnadzor the agency

Table 1 United States and Russia hunting statistics 2011ndash2012

Russian Federation United States

Total hunting land mill ha 13660 5294as percent national area 8000 5390

private hunting lands mill ha 7380 2470percent of hunting land that is private 540 467

Number of hunters in 2012 2800000 13700000Hunters as percent total population 196 444Recreational expenditures on hunting mill US dollars $50000 $3370000Implied average expenditure per hunter US dollars $17857 $245985

Notes Russian Government estimates 15 billion ha are available for hunting almost 100 percent of nationalterritoryUS private hunting lands figures leased plus owned from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife survey Table 34US primarily measures huntersrsquo days on public or private lands by surveyExpenditures on Russian hunting from Smolrsquoyakova interview with DonskoyExpenditures on US hunting from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife report 22Sources Smolrsquoyakova (2013) Degtyarev (2010)Federal Statistics of Russian Federation httpwwwgksruwpswcmconnectrosstat_mainrosstatrustatisticsenterpriseeconomyDevelopment of Hunting Strategy in Russian Federation to 2030 3 July 2014 N 1216-p httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtmlUnited States Fish amp Wildlife Service (2011) National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-AssociatedRecreationBackcountry Chronicles est BLM USFS and state public lands available for hunting httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

Eurasian Geography and Economics 463

$375 (Shalygin 2013b) Minister Sergey Donskoy reported in 2012 that there were3500 inspectors on duty throughout Russian hunting grounds averaging 450000hectares each (Smolrsquoyakova 2013) By comparison the US Bureau of LaborStatistics reported that in 2013 there were 6640 fish and game wardens employedin the United States with an average monthly wage 11 times higher than the aver-age in Russia (United States Department of Labor 2013)

(4) VIP hunters among the Russian power elite or wealthy South and Wyatt (2011)noted personal communication in 2007 from representatives at Phoenix a Russiannon-governmental organization (NGO) stating ldquoanother category of poachers isthose people who are not rich but that they have some protected position or knowsomeone For example a chief of police or a prosecutor knows that there will notbe any sanctions against them because of their position in societyrdquo (547)

The terms used in the Russian media for such illegal recreational hunting arechernoye safari (black safari Racheva 2009) tikhaya okhota (quiet hunt) andtsarskaya okhota (Tsarist hunting Zaitseva 2013) Elitist disregard for the bound-aries of nature reserves or hunting norms has been a long tradition dating back toSoviet times as documented by Zersquoev Wolfson in his 1980 exposeacute of environmen-tal crises (Komarov 1980 75ndash90) Many of the problems he outlined appear simi-lar to complaints about poachers in the current period lax enforcement lack ofsufficient number of inspectors courts that look the other way and impunity bypolitical elite

(5) Non-elite hunters The new hunting regulations make special provision forindigenous communities that have traditionally hunted for subsistence but manyrural people of Russian heritage have by necessity supplemented protein throughhunting1

Additionally both rural and urban Russians hunt for recreation The bulk of arrestsfines and prosecutions for illegal hunting has been attributed to violations by such hun-ters who do not fall into the high income or power elite category

Biologist Makarova (2014) analyzed a database of over 300000 violations of wild-life laws in Russia from 1999 to 2005 and drew conclusions about the type of peoplewho most often are apprehended (19) She noted that a decline in citations paralleledthe decline of rural populations in Russia a phenomenon also examined by Ioffe Nefe-dova and others in terms of land abandonment and overall impoverished economies inthe countryside (Ioffe Nefedova and De Beurs 2012 Ioffe Nefedova and Zaslavsky2006) Makarova (2014) found in her analysis that many of the poachers were peoplewho had licenses or belonged to hunting clubs and therefore growth of the phenomenonin Russia must be due to increased violations by existing poachers rather than ldquonewrecruitsrdquo into the ranks of poachers (66) She also discussed the assumption that povertyis a main cause of poaching and indeed found a higher number of cases in areas thathad experienced economic shocks

Methods value and limitations of social and advocacy media as a data source

While empirical evidence collected by experts noted above reveals that most poachingcases of recreational game are by local actors surveys suggest that the perception of theRussian public holds a relatively small group of elite violators responsible for the major-ity of cases

Eurasian Geography and Economics 461

A clue to understanding this dissonance may be found in a 2011 article by ViktorGurov a hunter and ranger who discussed his attempt to appreciate the motivation ofpeople caught poaching After many interviews with people he apprehended Gurovdecided there were three types of poachers (1) people pushed to the action by ldquomaterialor spiritualrdquo poverty (2) professional commercial poachers who are very arrogant andlooking out for their customers and (3) the powerful elite called by Gurov the bespre-delschiki (those without limits) who view themselves as above the law do not worryabout getting caught and are motivated by the ldquosweetness of forbidden fruitrdquo (Gurov2011) The author goes on to make recommendations to fight poachers in Russia andnotes that officials who are caught poaching and avoid responsibility just encourageordinary hunters to think ldquoif they can why not merdquo Elite violations therefore mayhave an impact far beyond the mere scope of the crimes themselves if the public feelsdiscouraged about upholding legal regimes for sustainable recreational hunting practices

I collected information sources to ascertain perceptions about poachers from socialand press media resulting in a largely anecdotal database based on the Russian textsSources of information included

bull Web-based Russian hunting journals for popular audiencesbull Web-based blogs and forums for rank-and-file huntersbull Advocacy web sites by environmental organizationsbull Press articles reporting alleged violations by elite poachers and public commentsreacting to such incidents

Most material was gleaned from publications dating from 2010 to 2014 but in somecases citations were made to earlier articles or press reports Often anecdotes werereported in multiple sources and I made efforts to track reports to the originalpublication

As in all literature surveys limitations of this method involve incorrect interpreta-tions of perceptions expressed in the Russian text the potential for bias in choice ofmaterials and self-selection of those who comment in online forums Because I wasinterested in reactions of hunters comments and blogs were surveyed at times resultingin vernacular jargon that required care to interpret This survey of social and pressmedia serves only as a starting point and a fruitful next step for analysis would bethrough questionnaire surveys such as Urbanrsquos (2010) research on attitudes of the elitein Russia or Eliasonrsquos (2004) on poachers in the United States

Russian legal regime for hunting2

Although hunting has long been a tradition in Russia for all social classes the numberof registered hunters in Russia has declined from 45 million in the 1980s to 28 millionin 2012 (Kuzenkov 2011 Smolrsquoyakova 2013) Registered adult hunters in Russia wereabout 196 percent of the population in 2012 versus 444 percent in the United States(United States Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011) this despite the fact that 80 percent of allland in Russia is designated as hunting land while in the United States it is 534percent (Table 1 Allen 2014 Kuzenkov 2011)

Historically hunting grounds in Russia were controlled in part by wealthy landown-ers and the nobility but up until the 1917 revolution rights to hunt on private landswere usually granted to lower social classes (Gamov 2014) Traditions such as huntingwith dogs and falconry entered Russia via the upper classes and were often portrayed in

462 K Braden

Russian art in an idealized form such as Vasiliy Perovrsquos famous 1871 painting Okhot-niki na privalye (Hunters at Rest) National leaders from tsarist to Soviet periods wereshown hunting in published photographs (Figure 1)

With the advent of the Soviet regime hunting clubs became more widespread andall hunting lands belonged to the state at the national or local level The governmentagency Glavokhota (Main Administration for Hunting and Zapovedniki-Reserves) hadauthority for regulation of both domestic and foreign hunters and hunting lands as wellas nature reserves (a good history of the organization may be found in Weiner [1999241ndash250] and a general history of hunting during Soviet times in Gamov [2014]) Theagency worked with some very large hunting unionsclubs often attached to police pro-fessions the railway sector or the military After the devolution of the Soviet Unionprivatization of hunting resources and growth of companies serving foreign trophy hun-ters began in earnest Some experts on hunting bemoan the post-Soviet developmentsValeriy Kuzenkov the editor of the journal Okhota in a 2010 interview noted ldquoNowboth our unified federal system for hunting oversight and our scientific and researchfacilities are in ruins hellip the country doesnrsquot have a unified and transparent system ofhunting oversightrdquo (Degtyarev 2010)

The changes to Glavokhota reflect many reorganization schemes for environmentalmanagement since the devolution of the Soviet Union The State Committee for Envi-ronmental Protection was abolished as far back as the year 2000 and many functionswere moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources (now the Ministry of NaturalResources and Ecology) of the Russian Federation the same bureaucracy responsiblefor drawing profits from exploitation of Russiarsquos resources Another source of complainthas been about the fact that Glavokhota had been connected to hunting inspectors andeducation to prevent poaching (Figure 2) whereas Gosokhotnadzor the agency

Table 1 United States and Russia hunting statistics 2011ndash2012

Russian Federation United States

Total hunting land mill ha 13660 5294as percent national area 8000 5390

private hunting lands mill ha 7380 2470percent of hunting land that is private 540 467

Number of hunters in 2012 2800000 13700000Hunters as percent total population 196 444Recreational expenditures on hunting mill US dollars $50000 $3370000Implied average expenditure per hunter US dollars $17857 $245985

Notes Russian Government estimates 15 billion ha are available for hunting almost 100 percent of nationalterritoryUS private hunting lands figures leased plus owned from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife survey Table 34US primarily measures huntersrsquo days on public or private lands by surveyExpenditures on Russian hunting from Smolrsquoyakova interview with DonskoyExpenditures on US hunting from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife report 22Sources Smolrsquoyakova (2013) Degtyarev (2010)Federal Statistics of Russian Federation httpwwwgksruwpswcmconnectrosstat_mainrosstatrustatisticsenterpriseeconomyDevelopment of Hunting Strategy in Russian Federation to 2030 3 July 2014 N 1216-p httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtmlUnited States Fish amp Wildlife Service (2011) National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-AssociatedRecreationBackcountry Chronicles est BLM USFS and state public lands available for hunting httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

Eurasian Geography and Economics 463

A clue to understanding this dissonance may be found in a 2011 article by ViktorGurov a hunter and ranger who discussed his attempt to appreciate the motivation ofpeople caught poaching After many interviews with people he apprehended Gurovdecided there were three types of poachers (1) people pushed to the action by ldquomaterialor spiritualrdquo poverty (2) professional commercial poachers who are very arrogant andlooking out for their customers and (3) the powerful elite called by Gurov the bespre-delschiki (those without limits) who view themselves as above the law do not worryabout getting caught and are motivated by the ldquosweetness of forbidden fruitrdquo (Gurov2011) The author goes on to make recommendations to fight poachers in Russia andnotes that officials who are caught poaching and avoid responsibility just encourageordinary hunters to think ldquoif they can why not merdquo Elite violations therefore mayhave an impact far beyond the mere scope of the crimes themselves if the public feelsdiscouraged about upholding legal regimes for sustainable recreational hunting practices

I collected information sources to ascertain perceptions about poachers from socialand press media resulting in a largely anecdotal database based on the Russian textsSources of information included

bull Web-based Russian hunting journals for popular audiencesbull Web-based blogs and forums for rank-and-file huntersbull Advocacy web sites by environmental organizationsbull Press articles reporting alleged violations by elite poachers and public commentsreacting to such incidents

Most material was gleaned from publications dating from 2010 to 2014 but in somecases citations were made to earlier articles or press reports Often anecdotes werereported in multiple sources and I made efforts to track reports to the originalpublication

As in all literature surveys limitations of this method involve incorrect interpreta-tions of perceptions expressed in the Russian text the potential for bias in choice ofmaterials and self-selection of those who comment in online forums Because I wasinterested in reactions of hunters comments and blogs were surveyed at times resultingin vernacular jargon that required care to interpret This survey of social and pressmedia serves only as a starting point and a fruitful next step for analysis would bethrough questionnaire surveys such as Urbanrsquos (2010) research on attitudes of the elitein Russia or Eliasonrsquos (2004) on poachers in the United States

Russian legal regime for hunting2

Although hunting has long been a tradition in Russia for all social classes the numberof registered hunters in Russia has declined from 45 million in the 1980s to 28 millionin 2012 (Kuzenkov 2011 Smolrsquoyakova 2013) Registered adult hunters in Russia wereabout 196 percent of the population in 2012 versus 444 percent in the United States(United States Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011) this despite the fact that 80 percent of allland in Russia is designated as hunting land while in the United States it is 534percent (Table 1 Allen 2014 Kuzenkov 2011)

Historically hunting grounds in Russia were controlled in part by wealthy landown-ers and the nobility but up until the 1917 revolution rights to hunt on private landswere usually granted to lower social classes (Gamov 2014) Traditions such as huntingwith dogs and falconry entered Russia via the upper classes and were often portrayed in

462 K Braden

Russian art in an idealized form such as Vasiliy Perovrsquos famous 1871 painting Okhot-niki na privalye (Hunters at Rest) National leaders from tsarist to Soviet periods wereshown hunting in published photographs (Figure 1)

With the advent of the Soviet regime hunting clubs became more widespread andall hunting lands belonged to the state at the national or local level The governmentagency Glavokhota (Main Administration for Hunting and Zapovedniki-Reserves) hadauthority for regulation of both domestic and foreign hunters and hunting lands as wellas nature reserves (a good history of the organization may be found in Weiner [1999241ndash250] and a general history of hunting during Soviet times in Gamov [2014]) Theagency worked with some very large hunting unionsclubs often attached to police pro-fessions the railway sector or the military After the devolution of the Soviet Unionprivatization of hunting resources and growth of companies serving foreign trophy hun-ters began in earnest Some experts on hunting bemoan the post-Soviet developmentsValeriy Kuzenkov the editor of the journal Okhota in a 2010 interview noted ldquoNowboth our unified federal system for hunting oversight and our scientific and researchfacilities are in ruins hellip the country doesnrsquot have a unified and transparent system ofhunting oversightrdquo (Degtyarev 2010)

The changes to Glavokhota reflect many reorganization schemes for environmentalmanagement since the devolution of the Soviet Union The State Committee for Envi-ronmental Protection was abolished as far back as the year 2000 and many functionswere moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources (now the Ministry of NaturalResources and Ecology) of the Russian Federation the same bureaucracy responsiblefor drawing profits from exploitation of Russiarsquos resources Another source of complainthas been about the fact that Glavokhota had been connected to hunting inspectors andeducation to prevent poaching (Figure 2) whereas Gosokhotnadzor the agency

Table 1 United States and Russia hunting statistics 2011ndash2012

Russian Federation United States

Total hunting land mill ha 13660 5294as percent national area 8000 5390

private hunting lands mill ha 7380 2470percent of hunting land that is private 540 467

Number of hunters in 2012 2800000 13700000Hunters as percent total population 196 444Recreational expenditures on hunting mill US dollars $50000 $3370000Implied average expenditure per hunter US dollars $17857 $245985

Notes Russian Government estimates 15 billion ha are available for hunting almost 100 percent of nationalterritoryUS private hunting lands figures leased plus owned from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife survey Table 34US primarily measures huntersrsquo days on public or private lands by surveyExpenditures on Russian hunting from Smolrsquoyakova interview with DonskoyExpenditures on US hunting from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife report 22Sources Smolrsquoyakova (2013) Degtyarev (2010)Federal Statistics of Russian Federation httpwwwgksruwpswcmconnectrosstat_mainrosstatrustatisticsenterpriseeconomyDevelopment of Hunting Strategy in Russian Federation to 2030 3 July 2014 N 1216-p httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtmlUnited States Fish amp Wildlife Service (2011) National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-AssociatedRecreationBackcountry Chronicles est BLM USFS and state public lands available for hunting httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

Eurasian Geography and Economics 463

Russian art in an idealized form such as Vasiliy Perovrsquos famous 1871 painting Okhot-niki na privalye (Hunters at Rest) National leaders from tsarist to Soviet periods wereshown hunting in published photographs (Figure 1)

With the advent of the Soviet regime hunting clubs became more widespread andall hunting lands belonged to the state at the national or local level The governmentagency Glavokhota (Main Administration for Hunting and Zapovedniki-Reserves) hadauthority for regulation of both domestic and foreign hunters and hunting lands as wellas nature reserves (a good history of the organization may be found in Weiner [1999241ndash250] and a general history of hunting during Soviet times in Gamov [2014]) Theagency worked with some very large hunting unionsclubs often attached to police pro-fessions the railway sector or the military After the devolution of the Soviet Unionprivatization of hunting resources and growth of companies serving foreign trophy hun-ters began in earnest Some experts on hunting bemoan the post-Soviet developmentsValeriy Kuzenkov the editor of the journal Okhota in a 2010 interview noted ldquoNowboth our unified federal system for hunting oversight and our scientific and researchfacilities are in ruins hellip the country doesnrsquot have a unified and transparent system ofhunting oversightrdquo (Degtyarev 2010)

The changes to Glavokhota reflect many reorganization schemes for environmentalmanagement since the devolution of the Soviet Union The State Committee for Envi-ronmental Protection was abolished as far back as the year 2000 and many functionswere moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources (now the Ministry of NaturalResources and Ecology) of the Russian Federation the same bureaucracy responsiblefor drawing profits from exploitation of Russiarsquos resources Another source of complainthas been about the fact that Glavokhota had been connected to hunting inspectors andeducation to prevent poaching (Figure 2) whereas Gosokhotnadzor the agency

Table 1 United States and Russia hunting statistics 2011ndash2012

Russian Federation United States

Total hunting land mill ha 13660 5294as percent national area 8000 5390

private hunting lands mill ha 7380 2470percent of hunting land that is private 540 467

Number of hunters in 2012 2800000 13700000Hunters as percent total population 196 444Recreational expenditures on hunting mill US dollars $50000 $3370000Implied average expenditure per hunter US dollars $17857 $245985

Notes Russian Government estimates 15 billion ha are available for hunting almost 100 percent of nationalterritoryUS private hunting lands figures leased plus owned from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife survey Table 34US primarily measures huntersrsquo days on public or private lands by surveyExpenditures on Russian hunting from Smolrsquoyakova interview with DonskoyExpenditures on US hunting from 2011 Fish amp Wildlife report 22Sources Smolrsquoyakova (2013) Degtyarev (2010)Federal Statistics of Russian Federation httpwwwgksruwpswcmconnectrosstat_mainrosstatrustatisticsenterpriseeconomyDevelopment of Hunting Strategy in Russian Federation to 2030 3 July 2014 N 1216-p httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtmlUnited States Fish amp Wildlife Service (2011) National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-AssociatedRecreationBackcountry Chronicles est BLM USFS and state public lands available for hunting httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

Eurasian Geography and Economics 463

responsible for legal oversight of hunting is now separated from other parts of gamemanagement in the MNR and housed instead in the Ministry of Agriculture Kuzenkovargued that there are inadequate inspectors for a country the size of Russia and thatinspectors have an insufficient power base or access to scientific norms (Degtyarev2010) In the past Glavokhota also had a Central Science and Research Laboratory ongame management and wildlife biology supervising 29 state-run experimental gamefarms Professor Mikhail Perovskiy a biologist with the Russian Agrarian Correspon-dence University in Moscow argued for the revival of not only Glavokhota but also itsagency culture noting that the employees and managers of the past were hunters

Figure 1 Historic Images of VIP Hunters Top Tsar Nikolay II at hunt in 1900 httpwwwebftourruarticleshtmid=631 bottom left Nikita Khrushchev (Leader of USSR from 1958 to 1964)and Josip Broz Tito (President of Yugoslavia) on a moose hunt 1961 Photo from the book Zavi-dovo Zhivaya istoriya (Sergey Devyatov Aleksandr Yegorov Valentin Zhilyaev and Olrsquoga Kay-kovoy 2014 Moscow KremlrsquoFilrsquom) and reproduced for website National Explorer httpwwwnexplorerrunews__12865htm bottom right Leonid Brezhnev (Leader of USSR from 1977 to1982) hunting 1973 Photographer Vladimir Musaelrsquoyan reproduced at website of NationalExplorer httpwwwnexplorerrunews__12865htm Websites accessed January 10 2015Source Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

464 K Braden

themselves Indeed when Khrushchev created the agency he drew upon members ofRosokhotrybolovsoyuz the main huntersrsquo union (Perovskiy 2011)

Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz which in 2013 welcomed Tatiyana Aramileva as its firstfemale president continues to be the largest hunting and fishing association in the coun-try with control of 14 percent of hunting land that is assigned to private organizationsand it serves as a powerful umbrella group for various regional clubs or unions(Degtyarev 2010 Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz 2013) In March 2013 a NGO OD-ROS(Obshchestvennoye Dvizheniye Rossiyskiy Okhotnicheskiy Soyuz [Social MovementRussian Hunting Union]) was formed and it sponsored a February 2014 conference inMoscow to empower rank-and-file hunters This new organization is emblematic ofdissatisfaction with the hunting legal regime in Russia Partly inspired by opposition torules eliminating some spring bird hunting because of proposed Russian accession toAEWA (Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirdsunder UNEP) OD-ROS also adopted resolutions on improvement of access to huntinggrounds and better equity on distribution of licenses (Okhotnikiru 2013)

As of 2014 226 species were designated as game animals (Lomanovoy 2010 Shalygin2013a) for hunting in Russia and the government estimated the equivalent of half abillion US dollars was spent on recreational hunting in 2010 (Degtyarev interview withV Kuzenkov 2010) while the figure for the United States was US $337 billion (UnitedStates Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011 Report Table 1) Ungulate species in Russia form themain game objects and include red deer roe deer musk deer spotted deer and moose but

Figure 2 1969 Soviet government anti-poaching poster by artist AA Shkrabo Translation ldquoAPoacher Is the Worst Enemy of NaturerdquoSource Permission was sought but the Darwin Museum in Moscow indicated that it was nolonger possible to obtain copyright for this as the agency that holds copyright is no longer in exis-tence

Eurasian Geography and Economics 465

wild boar is also hunted and fur-bearing fauna such as sable otters and beaver are huntedor trapped Brown bears have a limited legal hunt but the Russian Government has attimes forbidden spring hunting of hibernating bears (Walker 2012) By Russian Govern-ment estimates populations of wild boar roe deer and moose increased from 2004 to2012 by 90 27 and 46 percent respectively but the reported catch of these species grewat an even faster pace (Federal State Statistical Service 2012)

The rise in poaching energized environmental groups concerned over animal popula-tions and ecosystems to agitate for tougher laws In response national legislation onhunting began to be reformed and in 2009 a more unified strategy was announced(Law No 209) with Article 2 beginning to outline plans for sustainability of game andbetter preservation of biodiversity in Russia (Volyanskiy 2014) The plans called formore involvement by citizens and NGOs as well as for ways to make hunting resourcesmore accessible to the general public and it also envisioned improved scientific normsto determine wildlife management

Meanwhile studies by groups supported by outside international agencies such as theUnited Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) recognized the magnitude of the problemin Russia and called for much tougher laws and fines to punish poachers (see for exampleYurkova Almashev and Tokova (2007) on poaching levels in the Altay region) Damagewas classified by Russian law according to ldquomajor damagesrdquo such as destroying wildlifelisted in the Red Book of Endangered Species (Braden and Prudnikova 2008 Kasparek2011 MNR 2012a) versus damage to less ecologically significant game animals Amend-ments followed and even further calls went out to tighten the laws as the rise in poachingcontinued One member of the Duma Oleg Mikheev even proposed that all hunting bebanned in Russia an idea that did not receive much support (Shalygin 2013a) But prohibi-tions on hunting polar bears baby harp seals and other popular glamor species wereadopted although some limited hunting of polar bears resumed in 2011 in Russia Envi-ronmental NGOs were joined in the call for tougher standards by animal rights groups(such as Moscow Society of Animal Protection and IFAW the International Fund for Ani-mal Welfare) In some cases anti-poaching brigades were even created by outside groupsfor example the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank Global Envi-ronmental Facility financed them in the Altay-Sayan Ecoregion project (Kasparek 2011) incooperation with the Sosnovka Coalition (Angarova 2011) The Zelyeniy patrol (ldquoGreenPatrolrdquo) NGO started in Sakhalin in 2007 as a citizensrsquo action group in Russia and oftenpublicizes cases of poacher

At some regional levels local authorities had already raised fines for poaching forexample in Vologda Oblastrsquo by March 2013 Governor Oleg Kuvshinnikov made fines 10times higher than the previous year (Polyanskaya 2013) and he served as one source ofinsider pressure on the federal government The organizations publicized how low the fineswere for poaching of endangered species in Russia and the fact that even if caught poach-ers obtained profits vastly outweighing financial penalties In addition organizationsargued that the law should encompass not only those apprehended illegally killing animalsbut also criminals who participated in the transport and marketing of the products

On 15 June 2012 a new law (registered at Ministry of Justice 04022011 No 19704)entered into force with a subsequent law signed in May 2013 by Vladimir Putin (FederalLaw No 91 07052013) creating increased fines and penalties for those convicted ofpoaching Depending on the species and the circumstances fines have risen up to 10-foldThe law allows guns to be confiscated and the right to hunt may be revoked for up to twoyears Penalties for officials citizens who reoffend or organized crime members caughtand convicted of poaching are much harsher with higher financial penalties and prison

466 K Braden

terms up to seven years (Shalygin 2013b Smolrsquoyakova 2013 State Duma 2013WWF-Russia 2014a) These stricter penalties were hailed by experts and environmentalistsas an important first step to reduce poaching (Polyanskaya 2013) with Olga Zherebkina ofWWFAmur branch arguing that revocation of the right to hunt was one of the most effec-tive tools to combat poaching (WWF-Russia 2014a) Penalties were increased for huntingout of season hunting without proper documents or using hunting areas under lease with-out permission Inspectors were given more power to stop people demand documentslook at photographs or other artifacts and apprehend offenders

Since the advent of the new laws the Russian press and environmental web siteshave indeed publicized many cases of apprehended poachers The newspaper Vremya inthe Nizhniy Novgorod Oblastrsquo reported that nearly 3000 criminal cases of illegal hunt-ing had been prosecuted in the first half of 2014 alone (Stepanova 2014) In OmskOblastrsquo a resident of Nizhneomsk district was fined 160000 rubles (equivalent to morethan US $4000) for illegally killing from a snowmobile two roe deer and a rabbit(Yemelyanova 2014) The government arrest rate for game poachers will in all probabil-ity continue to increase (Lizer 2014) For example Oleg Mitvolrsquo former head ofRosprirodnadzor (Service for Oversight of Natural Resources within MNR) reportedduring an interview with Pravdaru that an estimated 20 percent of urban-based huntersand 30 percent of rural ones hunt without a license while the figure for the NorthCaucasus region was as much as 100 percent (Polyanskaya 2013)

But will the laws be effective enough to stop some of the most egregious forms ofpoaching by organized crime elements and VIP hunters or will they serve to mainlyapprehend more common lawbreakers who illegally take game stock

It was noted quickly after adoption of the new laws that they had a significant flawparagraph 531 prohibiting certain motorized forms of hunting (for example using heli-copters to hunt saiga antelope or shooting ungulates from ATVs) was dropped from thenew code Representatives from Greenpeace-Russia and WWF-Russia called attention tothe problem and began public campaigns to correct this omission Vladimir Krever ofWWFrsquos Moscow office argued that it had not been an oversight but eliminated purpose-fully and called it ldquolegalized poachingrdquo (Chizhova 2012 Greenpeace Russia 2012)Some comments ironically suggested that there was more in the new laws about use ofhunting dogs than the use of helicopters (Sinyakov 2012) and one online news serviceread ldquoMinpriroda (MNR) Has Created Ideal Conditions for VIP-Poachersrdquo (Gomzikova2012) Public pressure caused the law to be amended (Registered in the Ministry of Jus-tice on 30 May 2012 No 24394) to reinsert paragraph 531

Environmental groups were not the only ones examining the new laws Recreationalhunters seemed to be less welcoming of the legislation passed since 2009 online forumsand journals began to point out what were perceived as errors in the legislation Thecomplaints from the hunting communities encompassed the following issues

bull Lack of clarity especially congruence of local and federal laws and understandingof scientific norms for setting seasons and rules for each species the need forclearer definition of allowances of trapping for ldquoeducational purposesrdquo and whatconstitutes a scientific quota lack of clarity about constraints on the use of hunt-ing dogs (Degtyarev 2010 Kuzenkov 2011 Shalygin 2013a)

bull Continued impunity by powerful poachers with political or economic clout failure todeal with falsification of documents and permits in some local areas (Kuzenkov 2011)

bull Continued favor for privatization making fees for use of privatized hunting groundsmore expensive lack of recourse in the courts for hunters who have complaints about

Eurasian Geography and Economics 467

Table

2Gov

ernm

entsupp

ortof

huntingresourcesandprivatizationtrends20

05ndash201

2(incurrentpricesmillionrubles)

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2005ndash201

2(

)

Federal

finan

cial

support

Total

expend

itureson

theenvironm

ent

23393

025

922

829

520

036

862

734

336

837

238

241

201

443

231

918

481

Expenditureson

biod

iversity

12542

16052

21681

26597

21463

22975

13381

17850

14232

biod

iversity

aspercentof

environm

entalexpend

itures

536

619

734

722

625

617

325

413

77

01

General

expend

itureson

gamemanagem

ent

1489

2003

2601

3344

3847

4515

5502

6196

41612

gamemgm

tas

percentenvironm

entalexpend

itures

064

077

088

091

112

121

134

143

22

516

expend

ituresforbiolog

ical

conservatio

nmeasures

225

307

431

500

608

655

743

986

43822

expend

ituresto

mon

itorgamepo

pulatio

ns34

4059

7094

90117

151

44412

expend

ituresto

maintainhu

ntinginfrastructure

helliphellip

helliphellip

hellip44

651

452

0

Priva

tization

indicators

Num

berof

approv

edhu

ntingorganizatio

ns20

0622

7628

1229

7531

8936

1439

0839

5619

721

legally

definedorganizatio

ns19

5422

0426

7928

2530

2233

3835

83hellip

18337

individu

alentrepreneurs

5274

133

150

170

276

330

hellip63

462

Areaof

leased

huntingland

sthou

sha

62600

066

200

068

600

068

200

069

900

072

100

076

200

073

800

011789

Avg

leased

land

perhu

ntingorganizatio

nthou

sha

312

291

244

229

219

200

195

187

5978

Sou

rce

Gov

ernm

entof

Russian

Federation

Federal

Service

forState

Statisticsldquookruzhayu

shchayasredardquo

httpwwwgksruwpswcm

connectrosstat_m

ainrosstatrustatisticsenvironm

ent

468 K Braden

wild boar is also hunted and fur-bearing fauna such as sable otters and beaver are huntedor trapped Brown bears have a limited legal hunt but the Russian Government has attimes forbidden spring hunting of hibernating bears (Walker 2012) By Russian Govern-ment estimates populations of wild boar roe deer and moose increased from 2004 to2012 by 90 27 and 46 percent respectively but the reported catch of these species grewat an even faster pace (Federal State Statistical Service 2012)

The rise in poaching energized environmental groups concerned over animal popula-tions and ecosystems to agitate for tougher laws In response national legislation onhunting began to be reformed and in 2009 a more unified strategy was announced(Law No 209) with Article 2 beginning to outline plans for sustainability of game andbetter preservation of biodiversity in Russia (Volyanskiy 2014) The plans called formore involvement by citizens and NGOs as well as for ways to make hunting resourcesmore accessible to the general public and it also envisioned improved scientific normsto determine wildlife management

Meanwhile studies by groups supported by outside international agencies such as theUnited Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) recognized the magnitude of the problemin Russia and called for much tougher laws and fines to punish poachers (see for exampleYurkova Almashev and Tokova (2007) on poaching levels in the Altay region) Damagewas classified by Russian law according to ldquomajor damagesrdquo such as destroying wildlifelisted in the Red Book of Endangered Species (Braden and Prudnikova 2008 Kasparek2011 MNR 2012a) versus damage to less ecologically significant game animals Amend-ments followed and even further calls went out to tighten the laws as the rise in poachingcontinued One member of the Duma Oleg Mikheev even proposed that all hunting bebanned in Russia an idea that did not receive much support (Shalygin 2013a) But prohibi-tions on hunting polar bears baby harp seals and other popular glamor species wereadopted although some limited hunting of polar bears resumed in 2011 in Russia Envi-ronmental NGOs were joined in the call for tougher standards by animal rights groups(such as Moscow Society of Animal Protection and IFAW the International Fund for Ani-mal Welfare) In some cases anti-poaching brigades were even created by outside groupsfor example the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank Global Envi-ronmental Facility financed them in the Altay-Sayan Ecoregion project (Kasparek 2011) incooperation with the Sosnovka Coalition (Angarova 2011) The Zelyeniy patrol (ldquoGreenPatrolrdquo) NGO started in Sakhalin in 2007 as a citizensrsquo action group in Russia and oftenpublicizes cases of poacher

At some regional levels local authorities had already raised fines for poaching forexample in Vologda Oblastrsquo by March 2013 Governor Oleg Kuvshinnikov made fines 10times higher than the previous year (Polyanskaya 2013) and he served as one source ofinsider pressure on the federal government The organizations publicized how low the fineswere for poaching of endangered species in Russia and the fact that even if caught poach-ers obtained profits vastly outweighing financial penalties In addition organizationsargued that the law should encompass not only those apprehended illegally killing animalsbut also criminals who participated in the transport and marketing of the products

On 15 June 2012 a new law (registered at Ministry of Justice 04022011 No 19704)entered into force with a subsequent law signed in May 2013 by Vladimir Putin (FederalLaw No 91 07052013) creating increased fines and penalties for those convicted ofpoaching Depending on the species and the circumstances fines have risen up to 10-foldThe law allows guns to be confiscated and the right to hunt may be revoked for up to twoyears Penalties for officials citizens who reoffend or organized crime members caughtand convicted of poaching are much harsher with higher financial penalties and prison

466 K Braden

terms up to seven years (Shalygin 2013b Smolrsquoyakova 2013 State Duma 2013WWF-Russia 2014a) These stricter penalties were hailed by experts and environmentalistsas an important first step to reduce poaching (Polyanskaya 2013) with Olga Zherebkina ofWWFAmur branch arguing that revocation of the right to hunt was one of the most effec-tive tools to combat poaching (WWF-Russia 2014a) Penalties were increased for huntingout of season hunting without proper documents or using hunting areas under lease with-out permission Inspectors were given more power to stop people demand documentslook at photographs or other artifacts and apprehend offenders

Since the advent of the new laws the Russian press and environmental web siteshave indeed publicized many cases of apprehended poachers The newspaper Vremya inthe Nizhniy Novgorod Oblastrsquo reported that nearly 3000 criminal cases of illegal hunt-ing had been prosecuted in the first half of 2014 alone (Stepanova 2014) In OmskOblastrsquo a resident of Nizhneomsk district was fined 160000 rubles (equivalent to morethan US $4000) for illegally killing from a snowmobile two roe deer and a rabbit(Yemelyanova 2014) The government arrest rate for game poachers will in all probabil-ity continue to increase (Lizer 2014) For example Oleg Mitvolrsquo former head ofRosprirodnadzor (Service for Oversight of Natural Resources within MNR) reportedduring an interview with Pravdaru that an estimated 20 percent of urban-based huntersand 30 percent of rural ones hunt without a license while the figure for the NorthCaucasus region was as much as 100 percent (Polyanskaya 2013)

But will the laws be effective enough to stop some of the most egregious forms ofpoaching by organized crime elements and VIP hunters or will they serve to mainlyapprehend more common lawbreakers who illegally take game stock

It was noted quickly after adoption of the new laws that they had a significant flawparagraph 531 prohibiting certain motorized forms of hunting (for example using heli-copters to hunt saiga antelope or shooting ungulates from ATVs) was dropped from thenew code Representatives from Greenpeace-Russia and WWF-Russia called attention tothe problem and began public campaigns to correct this omission Vladimir Krever ofWWFrsquos Moscow office argued that it had not been an oversight but eliminated purpose-fully and called it ldquolegalized poachingrdquo (Chizhova 2012 Greenpeace Russia 2012)Some comments ironically suggested that there was more in the new laws about use ofhunting dogs than the use of helicopters (Sinyakov 2012) and one online news serviceread ldquoMinpriroda (MNR) Has Created Ideal Conditions for VIP-Poachersrdquo (Gomzikova2012) Public pressure caused the law to be amended (Registered in the Ministry of Jus-tice on 30 May 2012 No 24394) to reinsert paragraph 531

Environmental groups were not the only ones examining the new laws Recreationalhunters seemed to be less welcoming of the legislation passed since 2009 online forumsand journals began to point out what were perceived as errors in the legislation Thecomplaints from the hunting communities encompassed the following issues

bull Lack of clarity especially congruence of local and federal laws and understandingof scientific norms for setting seasons and rules for each species the need forclearer definition of allowances of trapping for ldquoeducational purposesrdquo and whatconstitutes a scientific quota lack of clarity about constraints on the use of hunt-ing dogs (Degtyarev 2010 Kuzenkov 2011 Shalygin 2013a)

bull Continued impunity by powerful poachers with political or economic clout failure todeal with falsification of documents and permits in some local areas (Kuzenkov 2011)

bull Continued favor for privatization making fees for use of privatized hunting groundsmore expensive lack of recourse in the courts for hunters who have complaints about

Eurasian Geography and Economics 467

Table

2Gov

ernm

entsupp

ortof

huntingresourcesandprivatizationtrends20

05ndash201

2(incurrentpricesmillionrubles)

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2005ndash201

2(

)

Federal

finan

cial

support

Total

expend

itureson

theenvironm

ent

23393

025

922

829

520

036

862

734

336

837

238

241

201

443

231

918

481

Expenditureson

biod

iversity

12542

16052

21681

26597

21463

22975

13381

17850

14232

biod

iversity

aspercentof

environm

entalexpend

itures

536

619

734

722

625

617

325

413

77

01

General

expend

itureson

gamemanagem

ent

1489

2003

2601

3344

3847

4515

5502

6196

41612

gamemgm

tas

percentenvironm

entalexpend

itures

064

077

088

091

112

121

134

143

22

516

expend

ituresforbiolog

ical

conservatio

nmeasures

225

307

431

500

608

655

743

986

43822

expend

ituresto

mon

itorgamepo

pulatio

ns34

4059

7094

90117

151

44412

expend

ituresto

maintainhu

ntinginfrastructure

helliphellip

helliphellip

hellip44

651

452

0

Priva

tization

indicators

Num

berof

approv

edhu

ntingorganizatio

ns20

0622

7628

1229

7531

8936

1439

0839

5619

721

legally

definedorganizatio

ns19

5422

0426

7928

2530

2233

3835

83hellip

18337

individu

alentrepreneurs

5274

133

150

170

276

330

hellip63

462

Areaof

leased

huntingland

sthou

sha

62600

066

200

068

600

068

200

069

900

072

100

076

200

073

800

011789

Avg

leased

land

perhu

ntingorganizatio

nthou

sha

312

291

244

229

219

200

195

187

5978

Sou

rce

Gov

ernm

entof

Russian

Federation

Federal

Service

forState

Statisticsldquookruzhayu

shchayasredardquo

httpwwwgksruwpswcm

connectrosstat_m

ainrosstatrustatisticsenvironm

ent

468 K Braden

terms up to seven years (Shalygin 2013b Smolrsquoyakova 2013 State Duma 2013WWF-Russia 2014a) These stricter penalties were hailed by experts and environmentalistsas an important first step to reduce poaching (Polyanskaya 2013) with Olga Zherebkina ofWWFAmur branch arguing that revocation of the right to hunt was one of the most effec-tive tools to combat poaching (WWF-Russia 2014a) Penalties were increased for huntingout of season hunting without proper documents or using hunting areas under lease with-out permission Inspectors were given more power to stop people demand documentslook at photographs or other artifacts and apprehend offenders

Since the advent of the new laws the Russian press and environmental web siteshave indeed publicized many cases of apprehended poachers The newspaper Vremya inthe Nizhniy Novgorod Oblastrsquo reported that nearly 3000 criminal cases of illegal hunt-ing had been prosecuted in the first half of 2014 alone (Stepanova 2014) In OmskOblastrsquo a resident of Nizhneomsk district was fined 160000 rubles (equivalent to morethan US $4000) for illegally killing from a snowmobile two roe deer and a rabbit(Yemelyanova 2014) The government arrest rate for game poachers will in all probabil-ity continue to increase (Lizer 2014) For example Oleg Mitvolrsquo former head ofRosprirodnadzor (Service for Oversight of Natural Resources within MNR) reportedduring an interview with Pravdaru that an estimated 20 percent of urban-based huntersand 30 percent of rural ones hunt without a license while the figure for the NorthCaucasus region was as much as 100 percent (Polyanskaya 2013)

But will the laws be effective enough to stop some of the most egregious forms ofpoaching by organized crime elements and VIP hunters or will they serve to mainlyapprehend more common lawbreakers who illegally take game stock

It was noted quickly after adoption of the new laws that they had a significant flawparagraph 531 prohibiting certain motorized forms of hunting (for example using heli-copters to hunt saiga antelope or shooting ungulates from ATVs) was dropped from thenew code Representatives from Greenpeace-Russia and WWF-Russia called attention tothe problem and began public campaigns to correct this omission Vladimir Krever ofWWFrsquos Moscow office argued that it had not been an oversight but eliminated purpose-fully and called it ldquolegalized poachingrdquo (Chizhova 2012 Greenpeace Russia 2012)Some comments ironically suggested that there was more in the new laws about use ofhunting dogs than the use of helicopters (Sinyakov 2012) and one online news serviceread ldquoMinpriroda (MNR) Has Created Ideal Conditions for VIP-Poachersrdquo (Gomzikova2012) Public pressure caused the law to be amended (Registered in the Ministry of Jus-tice on 30 May 2012 No 24394) to reinsert paragraph 531

Environmental groups were not the only ones examining the new laws Recreationalhunters seemed to be less welcoming of the legislation passed since 2009 online forumsand journals began to point out what were perceived as errors in the legislation Thecomplaints from the hunting communities encompassed the following issues

bull Lack of clarity especially congruence of local and federal laws and understandingof scientific norms for setting seasons and rules for each species the need forclearer definition of allowances of trapping for ldquoeducational purposesrdquo and whatconstitutes a scientific quota lack of clarity about constraints on the use of hunt-ing dogs (Degtyarev 2010 Kuzenkov 2011 Shalygin 2013a)

bull Continued impunity by powerful poachers with political or economic clout failure todeal with falsification of documents and permits in some local areas (Kuzenkov 2011)

bull Continued favor for privatization making fees for use of privatized hunting groundsmore expensive lack of recourse in the courts for hunters who have complaints about

Eurasian Geography and Economics 467

Table

2Gov

ernm

entsupp

ortof

huntingresourcesandprivatizationtrends20

05ndash201

2(incurrentpricesmillionrubles)

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2005ndash201

2(

)

Federal

finan

cial

support

Total

expend

itureson

theenvironm

ent

23393

025

922

829

520

036

862

734

336

837

238

241

201

443

231

918

481

Expenditureson

biod

iversity

12542

16052

21681

26597

21463

22975

13381

17850

14232

biod

iversity

aspercentof

environm

entalexpend

itures

536

619

734

722

625

617

325

413

77

01

General

expend

itureson

gamemanagem

ent

1489

2003

2601

3344

3847

4515

5502

6196

41612

gamemgm

tas

percentenvironm

entalexpend

itures

064

077

088

091

112

121

134

143

22

516

expend

ituresforbiolog

ical

conservatio

nmeasures

225

307

431

500

608

655

743

986

43822

expend

ituresto

mon

itorgamepo

pulatio

ns34

4059

7094

90117

151

44412

expend

ituresto

maintainhu

ntinginfrastructure

helliphellip

helliphellip

hellip44

651

452

0

Priva

tization

indicators

Num

berof

approv

edhu

ntingorganizatio

ns20

0622

7628

1229

7531

8936

1439

0839

5619

721

legally

definedorganizatio

ns19

5422

0426

7928

2530

2233

3835

83hellip

18337

individu

alentrepreneurs

5274

133

150

170

276

330

hellip63

462

Areaof

leased

huntingland

sthou

sha

62600

066

200

068

600

068

200

069

900

072

100

076

200

073

800

011789

Avg

leased

land

perhu

ntingorganizatio

nthou

sha

312

291

244

229

219

200

195

187

5978

Sou

rce

Gov

ernm

entof

Russian

Federation

Federal

Service

forState

Statisticsldquookruzhayu

shchayasredardquo

httpwwwgksruwpswcm

connectrosstat_m

ainrosstatrustatisticsenvironm

ent

468 K Braden

Table

2Gov

ernm

entsupp

ortof

huntingresourcesandprivatizationtrends20

05ndash201

2(incurrentpricesmillionrubles)

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2005ndash201

2(

)

Federal

finan

cial

support

Total

expend

itureson

theenvironm

ent

23393

025

922

829

520

036

862

734

336

837

238

241

201

443

231

918

481

Expenditureson

biod

iversity

12542

16052

21681

26597

21463

22975

13381

17850

14232

biod

iversity

aspercentof

environm

entalexpend

itures

536

619

734

722

625

617

325

413

77

01

General

expend

itureson

gamemanagem

ent

1489

2003

2601

3344

3847

4515

5502

6196

41612

gamemgm

tas

percentenvironm

entalexpend

itures

064

077

088

091

112

121

134

143

22

516

expend

ituresforbiolog

ical

conservatio

nmeasures

225

307

431

500

608

655

743

986

43822

expend

ituresto

mon

itorgamepo

pulatio

ns34

4059

7094

90117

151

44412

expend

ituresto

maintainhu

ntinginfrastructure

helliphellip

helliphellip

hellip44

651

452

0

Priva

tization

indicators

Num

berof

approv

edhu

ntingorganizatio

ns20

0622

7628

1229

7531

8936

1439

0839

5619

721

legally

definedorganizatio

ns19

5422

0426

7928

2530

2233

3835

83hellip

18337

individu

alentrepreneurs

5274

133

150

170

276

330

hellip63

462

Areaof

leased

huntingland

sthou

sha

62600

066

200

068

600

068

200

069

900

072

100

076

200

073

800

011789

Avg

leased

land

perhu

ntingorganizatio

nthou

sha

312

291

244

229

219

200

195

187

5978

Sou

rce

Gov

ernm

entof

Russian

Federation

Federal

Service

forState

Statisticsldquookruzhayu

shchayasredardquo

httpwwwgksruwpswcm

connectrosstat_m

ainrosstatrustatisticsenvironm

ent

468 K Braden

private hunting organizations with land leases who do not follow regulations(Volyanskiy 2014)

bull Unclear laws about road access to public hunting grounds (particularly if routes mustcut across surrounding privatized lands) and about rules for hunting on agriculturaland forest lands (Degtyarev 2010)

bull Increased restrictions for public target practice areas or shooting rangesbull Higher costs of licenses creating burdens for rural poor especially elderly pensioners(Degtyarev 2010)

bull New cost imposed for recertification to renew licenses every five years by requiringgun safety training even for lifelong hunters The cost of the certification program8000 rubles represents about US $225 or by 2011 values one-half monthrsquos wages interms of averages for 45 percent of the Russian population (Federal State StatisticalService 2012)

Concurrent with the tighter laws the government of the Russian Federation issued astrategic plan to the year 2030 (MNR 2014) The plan was signed 3 July 2014 by PrimeMinister Dmitry Medvedev and recognizes the shortage of trained personnel and theneed to improve the population management of game animals The goals call for

bull increasing the number of game species to their ldquoecological capacityrdquo and mainte-nance of genetic diversity

bull increasing the economic value of hunting in Russia to one-half of one percent ofGDP (the value of hunting resources was estimated to be one-half billion US buthas the potential to increase to US $12 billion Shalygin 2014)

bull training sufficient state inspectors to allow three for each municipal district thatcontains hunting grounds

bull reducing poaching by a factor of 25 increasing the privatization of hunting landsin Russia and number of lease agreements with private organizations but makingliability stricter for hunting companies who do not follow regulations

bull increasing the number of game farms and public access to hunting areasbull clarifying the rights of hunters and the method for obtaining permitsbull establishing incentives to attract private investment in recreational hunting Theplan also recognizes that development of ecotourism would be a positive incomesource for indigenous communities

Budget allocations to achieve the plan were to be announced separately as each budgetcycle unfolded From 2005 to 2012 game management expenditure as a percent of fed-eral Russian Government spending on the environment grew from 064 to 143 percenta small portion of overall environmental spending but outpacing overall environmentalexpenditures in terms of growth trajectory (Table 2)

Privatization of hunting lands

The plan for 2030 also underlines the strategy of increased long-term leases on huntinggrounds that were formerly state run and open to the public respectively termed zakre-plennyye okhotnichrsquoyye ugodrsquoi (allotted hunting grounds) versus ODu for Obshchedos-tupnyye ugodrsquoi (commonly accessible hunting grounds) Table 2 shows the trend inallotments from 2005 to 2012 and the number of okhotpolrsquozovateli or designated pri-vate enterprise hunting organizations While leased land has grown (MNR 2012b) it

Eurasian Geography and Economics 469

has been outpaced by the increase in approved hunting organizations indicating thehigh demand for privatization In some areas such as the Voronezh region leased hunt-ing lands take up 85 percent of all hunting grounds in the Altay Kray 857 percent(Gorbachev 2014 Shalygin 2014 web portal for Hunting Administration of Altay Krayhttpwwwaltayohotaru accessed 13 September 2014) Private hunting grounds tend tobe better managed often with better paid staff and the ability to control game popula-tions therefore there is a tendency for game to concentrate on private grounds awayfrom areas of publicly accessible hunting ndash the Russian Government in creating the2030 plan noted that 91 percent of wild boar 75 percent of moose and 61 percent ofroe deer are now located on private land allotments (MNR 2014)

Shalygin (2014) writing in the politically conservative hunting news source Na-tional Explorer called for a more vigorous public debate among the hunting publicabout the wisdom of the strategic plan The strategic direction of the Russian Govern-ment may seek to head off the ldquotragedy of the commonsrdquo with respect to wildlife sus-tainability but it also creates a stronger monopoly control of game resources (Figure 3)The editor of the journal Okhota noted this in a 2010 interview about the direction thenew laws were taking

New proprietors often look at these lands as their own private domain ndash they think thatthey have the right to do what they want with them Very often they close access to theterritory for the local population This provokes conflicts (Degtyarev 2010)

The Russian Government set a goal of keeping at least 20 percent of hunting lands pub-lic (federal law on hunting Article 7 para 3) but hunting leases are becoming a com-mon method for game management in other countries (note Table 1 United States) Toattract investment the Russian Government concludes special agreements with huntingorganizations and entrepreneurs for terms from 20 to 49 years These entities in turnpledge that game resources will be subject to conservation measures Leases are deter-mined at auction and the process is supposed to be transparent and publicly scrutinizedwith the rental fees accruing to the federal budget Reporting requirements are quitedetailed with forms requesting information on every aspect of the lease from number ofemployees to estimated cost of road maintenance on the grounds

Regions set limits and boundaries on leased land and collect fees according to a sched-ule set by the tax code if the land is not bid by auction In 2010 the average was 10 rublesper hectare for a land lease though in remote regions such as Khanty-Mansi AutonomousOkrug the cost might be only one ruble per hectare (MNR 30 June 2010 law No 490)

From 2005 to 2011 the number of okhotpolrsquozovateli categorized as legal organiza-tions grew by 83 percent (Table 2) while the number of private individuals with suchdesignations grew more than six times (from 52 to 330) By the year 2013 there were4033 okhotpolrsquozovateli reported by the Federal Statistical Service3 These enterpriseswhether leases or outright purchases are part of the general transfer of rural land to oli-garchs and wealthy business elite as outlined by Visser Mamonova and Spoor in their2012 article in The Journal of Peasant Studies and by Grigory Ioffe and others (IoffeNefedova and De Beurs 2012) in their examination of the impoverished state of ruralland holdings in Russia On the one hand the phenomenon represents needed invest-ment in economic development of abandoned land But questions are raised overwhether laws are followed and investments benefit local underemployed populations4

In 2011 reporter Valeriy Serdyukov in the newspaper Vedomosti published selectdata on the size of some hunting leases by 16 well-known individuals or organizations

470 K Braden

has been outpaced by the increase in approved hunting organizations indicating thehigh demand for privatization In some areas such as the Voronezh region leased hunt-ing lands take up 85 percent of all hunting grounds in the Altay Kray 857 percent(Gorbachev 2014 Shalygin 2014 web portal for Hunting Administration of Altay Krayhttpwwwaltayohotaru accessed 13 September 2014) Private hunting grounds tend tobe better managed often with better paid staff and the ability to control game popula-tions therefore there is a tendency for game to concentrate on private grounds awayfrom areas of publicly accessible hunting ndash the Russian Government in creating the2030 plan noted that 91 percent of wild boar 75 percent of moose and 61 percent ofroe deer are now located on private land allotments (MNR 2014)

Shalygin (2014) writing in the politically conservative hunting news source Na-tional Explorer called for a more vigorous public debate among the hunting publicabout the wisdom of the strategic plan The strategic direction of the Russian Govern-ment may seek to head off the ldquotragedy of the commonsrdquo with respect to wildlife sus-tainability but it also creates a stronger monopoly control of game resources (Figure 3)The editor of the journal Okhota noted this in a 2010 interview about the direction thenew laws were taking

New proprietors often look at these lands as their own private domain ndash they think thatthey have the right to do what they want with them Very often they close access to theterritory for the local population This provokes conflicts (Degtyarev 2010)

The Russian Government set a goal of keeping at least 20 percent of hunting lands pub-lic (federal law on hunting Article 7 para 3) but hunting leases are becoming a com-mon method for game management in other countries (note Table 1 United States) Toattract investment the Russian Government concludes special agreements with huntingorganizations and entrepreneurs for terms from 20 to 49 years These entities in turnpledge that game resources will be subject to conservation measures Leases are deter-mined at auction and the process is supposed to be transparent and publicly scrutinizedwith the rental fees accruing to the federal budget Reporting requirements are quitedetailed with forms requesting information on every aspect of the lease from number ofemployees to estimated cost of road maintenance on the grounds

Regions set limits and boundaries on leased land and collect fees according to a sched-ule set by the tax code if the land is not bid by auction In 2010 the average was 10 rublesper hectare for a land lease though in remote regions such as Khanty-Mansi AutonomousOkrug the cost might be only one ruble per hectare (MNR 30 June 2010 law No 490)

From 2005 to 2011 the number of okhotpolrsquozovateli categorized as legal organiza-tions grew by 83 percent (Table 2) while the number of private individuals with suchdesignations grew more than six times (from 52 to 330) By the year 2013 there were4033 okhotpolrsquozovateli reported by the Federal Statistical Service3 These enterpriseswhether leases or outright purchases are part of the general transfer of rural land to oli-garchs and wealthy business elite as outlined by Visser Mamonova and Spoor in their2012 article in The Journal of Peasant Studies and by Grigory Ioffe and others (IoffeNefedova and De Beurs 2012) in their examination of the impoverished state of ruralland holdings in Russia On the one hand the phenomenon represents needed invest-ment in economic development of abandoned land But questions are raised overwhether laws are followed and investments benefit local underemployed populations4

In 2011 reporter Valeriy Serdyukov in the newspaper Vedomosti published selectdata on the size of some hunting leases by 16 well-known individuals or organizations

470 K Braden

totaling 2573 million hectares an area almost three times the size of YellowstoneNational Park (Serdyukov 2011) The percent of land available for leasing and the num-ber of hunting organizations are supposed to be distributed across the country accordingto scientific norms for game sustainability and demand but in reality the pattern reflectsurban populations Thus Leningrad Oblastrsquo has 133 organizations with long-term leasesranging from 232000 to 406 hectares in size (Vedomosti news January 20 2012) EVBenderskiy Chair of Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz published an open letter to the deputyminister of MNR on the issue of exclusionary rights to hunting grounds complainingthat the criterion for setting standards on maximum amount of leased land per regionwas not clear and the part of the law trying to prevent monopolistic control of land wassubject to interpretation (Benderskiy 2012)

The director of the hunting department for MNR Anton Bersenyev addressed per-ceived inequities in the privatization process in an interview with Sergey Fokin for theonline hunting journal Okhotnikru The reporter stated

for our conversation it is appropriate to begin with the issues of concern to many hunterswho believe that the transfer of hunting grounds to legal entities including individual usersleads to the infringement of the rights of hunters especially local ones who have hunted insuch places for many generations (Fokin 2013)

Perhaps the sensitivity to unfairness in more recent hunting land leases may be summedup best by Valery Serdyukov in his article on oligarchs and hunting Noting that variouspublic organizations and hunting clubs had been losing out on their long-term leasesbroken by the government in favor of being auctioned off (sometimes in a non-transpar-ent manner) to new private enterprises he wrote

Only ten years ago almost all hunting land was public in terms of the number [of individ-ual grounds] listed for common hunting But then everything changed ldquoMuscovites arrivedand hunted They liked our places and said they wanted to take the landrdquo remembers onemember of a regional hunting society ldquoWe put in a claim won the competition andreceived a license for the plot we wantedrdquo noted a Moscow businessman one of the largestrenters of hunting lands in the Northwest (Serdyukov 2011)

Did the advent of the improved hunting laws even the playing field Serdyukov (2011)cites evidence that before the new laws came into force those with information andpower made preparations to win the auctions in advance and secure long-term 49-yearleases He cited the example of Tver Oblastrsquo where 16 agreements were signed by thegovernor for leases totaling 220085 ha each for a 49-year period all concluded on theeve of the open auction

Such anecdotal evidence cannot be accepted as a pattern but discussions on huntingforums suggest there is at least a perception among ordinary hunters that they areincreasingly being shutout from hunting resources while at the same time the powerelite are allowed full access to game even if it violates the law

The impact of high-profile poaching cases

As suggested by such exposeacutes as Zersquoev Wolfsonrsquos book noted above men in power inRussia or the USSR have long exhibited unconcern and impunity about violating hunt-ing norms In 1997 for example Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and AnatolyLisitsyn governor of Yaroslavrsquo Oblastrsquo were accused of illegally shooting a hibernating

Eurasian Geography and Economics 471

female bear but no charges were ever filed (Apalrsquokov and Averin 2008) Boris Yeltsinand the governor of Novgorod Oblastrsquo were alleged to hunt moose out of season(Moiseyenko 2004) An important difference with the past is the availability ofinformation in the Internet age The Russian press (print online and broadcast) socialmedia environmental organizations and huntersrsquo online forums have all publicizedVIP-poaching Sufficient cases emerged just in the last few years to allow creation ofTable A1 in Appendix 1 via information from media outlets Not all the cases listedhave resulted in convictions therefore I present the information as a demonstration ofhow perceptions are created in the mind of the public not as a list of people convictedof poaching

WWF-Russia and TraSSS (Center for Study of Terrorism International OrganizedCrime and Corruption) released a report on poaching in the Russian Far East and theirsurvey research seemed to affirm that local people believe that wildlife crime is oftenperpetrated by a powerful elite A majority (78 percent) of those surveyed felt that poach-ers were primarily people in power and 59 percent surveyed thought that the wealthywere the most common poachers (Vaysman Matveychuk and Minrsquokov 2012 13) Whilethe authors of the report felt that involvement of the local community to halt the crimeswas necessary at the same time it was acknowledged that local peoplersquos perceptions shiftthe blame to elite outsiders Baydykov (2012) a former hunting guide who worked foryears in the Altay Krayrsquos Kislukhinskiy reserve echoed this impression when hediscussed elite hunters who for years practiced illegal helicopter hunting in the region Hestated that such people crushed the institution of real hunting in the Altay Kray and thatordinary poorer hunters could certainly not afford the mechanized equipment

Not satisfied with open hunting grounds and seasons confident in their impunity they entera wildlife sanctuary on snowmobiles and helicopters The only obstacle in their way mightbe a ranger And the consequences of those encounters I find offensive

Vladimir Aramilev a renowned wildlife scientist who coordinates the Amur leopardprogram for WWF-Russia argued in an editorial for Russkiy okhotnichiy zhurnal (2014)that all the efforts and funds to halt poaching in Russia might be in vain because of asystem that does not inherently have a design to stop it He did find some hope inimprovement of some game animal numbers since privatized game farms look out fortheir investments However Aramilev also wrote that those who prosecute the crime donot work actively enough to condemn the perpetrators and therefore the impunity thatpoachers enjoy breeds contempt for the law

A citizen who is law-abiding is guided by his inner convictions which coincide with lawsof human society and fear of inevitable punishment Double standards completely ruinedthe system of loyal relations to onersquos neighbor the conservation of the environment andcompliance with the law The post-Soviet period with raging theft and banditry put an endto the soul of a Russian person Therefore a law abiding citizenry can only be achievedthrough the second path through the fear of inevitable punishment And what type of inevi-table punishment for poaching can there be if even those who work for powerful officesare not interested (Aramilev 2013)

While poaching accusations against officials and wealthy businessmen occur throughoutRussia the record in the Altay Republic has been especially gruesome Severalhigh-profile cases were broadly covered in the Russian press and followed keenly byenvironmental organizations In 2003 a local wildlife manager encountered a group

472 K Braden

who illegally hunted from a Mi-8 helicopter a protected herd of ibex and the groupturned out to include Aleksey Saurin who at the time was head of federal managementfor hunting resources (Braden and Prudnikova 2008 15ndash16)

Perhaps the most notorious case was referred to as ldquoAltay-gaterdquo (Castner andEwald 2009) A VIP group had apparently been illegally hunting argali in the Kosh-Agach district when the helicopter crashed (the Altapress was quickly on the scene ofthe accident and published pictures including of the ibex) Among the dead were thepresidential envoy to the State Duma Aleksandr Kosopkin and Viktor Kaimin chair-man of the Committee for the Protection Use and Reproduction of Fauna of theAltay Republic who had earlier promoted trophy hunting in the Altay The four whosurvived included the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Altay Anatoly Ban-nykh chief for the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy and EntrepreneurshipNikolai Kapranov CEO of the Moscow-based industrial environmental companyldquoInekordquo Boris Belinsky and a co-pilot Maxim Kolbin Bannykh resigned his positionafter the crash and he along with Belinsky and Kapranov were charged with illegalhunting The investigation dragged on for two years with the case alternately dis-missed and reopened as environmental groups brought pressure on the governmentThe defendants claimed they had not participated in the actual shooting but only wereguilty of being present on the helicopter On 23 May 2011 the three men wereacquitted and the prosecutor appealed When sent back to local courts it was decidedthat the statute of limitations had expired Commenting on the case Mikhail Kreyn-dlin of Greenpeace-Russia noted ldquoTruly now VIP-poachers have gotten a clear signallsquoall is possible and nothing will come of itrsquo The ordinary citizen caught poachingcan be punished with a real prison term Senior officials are not threatened with any-thingrdquo (Vishnevskiy 2011)

But other high-profile cases have been brought under suspicious circumstancesAleksey Navalny with the Progress Party and an active opponent of Vladimir Putin wasaccused by VOOP (the All-Russian Nature Conservation Society) of poaching becausehe posed for a picture after moose hunting that appeared to be taken in the summerwhile the season does not start until October (The Moscow Times 2014) LyubovrsquoDuyko who heads up the societyrsquos legal affairs sent an official complaint to the pros-ecutorrsquos office Navalny denied the charge Duyko is a prominent member of PutinrsquosUnited Russia Party (along with other members of the VOOP Board) and stood for2014 municipal elections in the Porokhovyye district of St Petersburg as a party mem-ber (Varkhivakhnet 2014)

Some attempts to bring valid complaints against VIP illegal hunters have resulted indifficult times for inspectors or prosecutors One well-known case involved AleksandrDovydenko a hunting guide with the organization ldquoMosoblokhotupravleniyrdquo who losthis job in 2013 and was sentenced to probation in a prison term for abuse of power Hehad apprehended people he accused of illegal hunting including the head of Gazpromrsquosgeology division Gennady Kucherov and the CEO of the firm ldquoTranssetirdquo (Table A1)Questions arose during the trial of whether Dovydenko had shot one person in a groupof poachers whom he claimed were resisting arrest by escaping on their snowmobileAn unemployed hunter who accompanied the others was the only one eventuallycharged and convicted of poaching (Shvarev 2013b) The Dovydenko case receivedmuch attention and inspired a petition via the NGO ldquoChangeorgrdquo to relieve him of thecharges5 A similar incident occurred in Kurgan Oblastrsquo with an inspector who sus-pected police of poaching from snowmobiles reported it and then was arrested himself

Eurasian Geography and Economics 473

and accused of taking bribes in earlier incidents The poaching case against the officialswas never prosecuted (Chelovek i zakon 2014)

Motivations for VIP-poaching

Recreational poaching has been examined by Muth and Bowe (1998) in the UnitedStates and the authors suggested two motivations poaching as ldquothrill killingrdquo andobsession with display of trophies (15ndash17) One aspect that differentiates motivation inthese cases from the Russian context is the element of secretiveness Illegal trophy hun-ters in the American West take pains to hide the evidence from authorities (Archibold2006) while VIP poachers in Russia usually operate in an open fashion

Urbanrsquos (2010) study of the cultures of power in post-communist Russia provides auseful framework for exploring the motivations of Russian VIP poachers While abusesof power by oligarchs and the nouveaux riches have been well documented (see forexample Dawisha 2014 Hoffman 2002) Urbanrsquos study allows a look inside the cultureof the elite through interviews and defines the importance of the sub-culture or ldquoinrdquogroup He suggests that for those on the outside the actions of the elite may seem mis-taken or crazy but ldquofor those sharing the same habitus informed by the same culturalpractices and participating in the same discourse they are regarded as realrdquo (6) FurtherUrban presents a strong case that law and morality do not go hand in hand for those inpower but actually may work in opposition moral criteria are established through inter-personal relationships while the law itself is regarded as a weakness (15ndash16) This argu-ment coincides well with Aramilevrsquos position noted above that once respect for the lawthrough an inner moral compass disappears there is only the of threat punishment thatwill halt lawbreakers

Researchers have suggested that part of Vladimir Putinrsquos mass appeal to citizens ishis role in ldquore-masculinizingrdquo their self-image as Russians (Foxall 2013 Riabov andRiabova 2014) Gender is an important boundary marker for those in power and theattempt to make concrete an ldquousrdquo versus ldquothemrdquo mentality Riabov and Riabova (2014)noted that the traditional attributes of masculinity suggest power while submissioncorrelates with what (in the authorsrsquo view) some Russians perceive as feminine attri-butes (25ndash25) A study of the public images portrayed by Putin in settings that arehyper-masculine (Figure 4) underscores these arguments Foxall has examined a seriesof Kremlin-approved photographs released of Putin that show him in traditional maleactivities associated with outdoor recreation and noted that these have created anldquoAction Manrdquo portrait of a leader (Foxall 2013 134 see also Young 2011) A milita-rized virility is an expression of state power The term associated with such images isnastoyashchiy muzhik in the past referring to the peasant tradition in Russia but nowco-opted by elite such as Putin to suggest it is he who is the ldquorealrdquo Russian guy (Riabovand Riabova 2014)

What might the real ldquoreal muzhikirdquo think of such seemingly hyper-masculineexpressions of power Online forum responses by rank-and-file hunters suggest an atti-tude of contempt While Putin may remain popular with the public press coverage andsocial media discussion of unpunished elite criminals often highlight the bloodthirstynature of the crime the seeming unconcern of the VIP hunters and even public dis-dain6

474 K Braden

Figure 3 Editorial cartoon on privatization of hunting resources by artist Mikhail LarichevVecherniy Peterburg October 20 2009 Translation ldquoSoldrdquoSource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Figure 4 Vladimir Putin on a hunt in the Tyva Republic 2007 Photograph by European PressPhoto AgencySource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Eurasian Geography and Economics 475

Greedy people driven by vanity and after blood hellip not poor people but people in goodpositions (Baydykov 2012)

What land is left to defend Only those asshole oligarchs are lefthellipif the state laws are notfunctioning itrsquos time to fire the officials and their entourages -blogger comments on poach-ing in Samara Luka Nature Park (Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014)

It seems to be that soon the only justice in Russia will be vigilante justice- blogger com-ment on Altay-gate helicopter crash incident (Mir Novostey 2014)

On the theme of poaching a law should be perceived normally as a law by hunters A badlaw is not a law but just derives from rotten conditions hellip Right now order is only upheldthrough repression but the order is spoiled Controllers are caught up in it ten times overfor this bullshit not a society determining its own traditions Blogger ldquodEretikrdquo (Gunsruforum 2013 Shvarev 2013a)

Officials are lawless hellip you canrsquot beat the system you can only be indignant and learnfrom the mistakes of others Blogger Xgod89 (Gunsru forum 2011)

The truth about Russia now is that MNR and the courts do not rule but insolent jerks whomuzzle the courts and prosecutorsrsquo offices are in charge Blogger A Bonch-Bruyevich com-menting on Dovydenko case (Shvarev 2013b)

Some fat urban dyadrsquoka who goes into the forest and finds a bear or moose poached withhelp of hunting guide (Shalygin 2013a)

Conclusion for hunting sustainability ndash the value of a moral compass

I have argued that VIP illegal hunting though not a high percentage of poaching casessets a destructive tone not only because of direct damage to wildlife sustainability butalso because it contributes to corruption of inspectors and prosecution personnel cyni-cism about rule of law and a discouragement to non-elite hunters who are increasinglycut off from prey due to regulations and higher costs

The utility for VIP hunters may not be economic gain but may be the sense of powerenhancement and differentiation from the masses Social science research has suggestedthat unhidden violations of social norms may actually signal power whereas lower powerindividuals are more subject to social constraints (see for example Van Kleef et al2011) There are rewards to elevated power and the establishment of identity in a selectsubgroup of actors Resources are more accessible as is the ability to make decisions onhow to distribute those resources to others Keltner Gruenfeld and Anderson (2003)have cited numerous social-psychological experiments suggesting that elevated powerincreases the likelihood of socially inappropriate actions often showing up in males asldquoprofligate behaviorsrdquo (276ndash277) Given these precepts it is possible that overt incidentsof impunity in wildlife crime by VIP hunters in Russia are signs of status and a way tomaintain group identity a proposition that calls for further investigation

In turn the narrative of VIP poaching solidifies the perception of corruption ndash a phe-nomenon measured in Transparency Internationalrsquos Corruption Perceptions Index(Transparency International 2014) and a sense of hopelessness about the system ndash a factobserved by Russian social scientists such as Kofanova and Petukhov (2006) who sug-gest a narrative about endemic corruption is created in the minds of ordinary RussiansSurvey results show that most Russians believe the state does not act in the interest of

476 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

female bear but no charges were ever filed (Apalrsquokov and Averin 2008) Boris Yeltsinand the governor of Novgorod Oblastrsquo were alleged to hunt moose out of season(Moiseyenko 2004) An important difference with the past is the availability ofinformation in the Internet age The Russian press (print online and broadcast) socialmedia environmental organizations and huntersrsquo online forums have all publicizedVIP-poaching Sufficient cases emerged just in the last few years to allow creation ofTable A1 in Appendix 1 via information from media outlets Not all the cases listedhave resulted in convictions therefore I present the information as a demonstration ofhow perceptions are created in the mind of the public not as a list of people convictedof poaching

WWF-Russia and TraSSS (Center for Study of Terrorism International OrganizedCrime and Corruption) released a report on poaching in the Russian Far East and theirsurvey research seemed to affirm that local people believe that wildlife crime is oftenperpetrated by a powerful elite A majority (78 percent) of those surveyed felt that poach-ers were primarily people in power and 59 percent surveyed thought that the wealthywere the most common poachers (Vaysman Matveychuk and Minrsquokov 2012 13) Whilethe authors of the report felt that involvement of the local community to halt the crimeswas necessary at the same time it was acknowledged that local peoplersquos perceptions shiftthe blame to elite outsiders Baydykov (2012) a former hunting guide who worked foryears in the Altay Krayrsquos Kislukhinskiy reserve echoed this impression when hediscussed elite hunters who for years practiced illegal helicopter hunting in the region Hestated that such people crushed the institution of real hunting in the Altay Kray and thatordinary poorer hunters could certainly not afford the mechanized equipment

Not satisfied with open hunting grounds and seasons confident in their impunity they entera wildlife sanctuary on snowmobiles and helicopters The only obstacle in their way mightbe a ranger And the consequences of those encounters I find offensive

Vladimir Aramilev a renowned wildlife scientist who coordinates the Amur leopardprogram for WWF-Russia argued in an editorial for Russkiy okhotnichiy zhurnal (2014)that all the efforts and funds to halt poaching in Russia might be in vain because of asystem that does not inherently have a design to stop it He did find some hope inimprovement of some game animal numbers since privatized game farms look out fortheir investments However Aramilev also wrote that those who prosecute the crime donot work actively enough to condemn the perpetrators and therefore the impunity thatpoachers enjoy breeds contempt for the law

A citizen who is law-abiding is guided by his inner convictions which coincide with lawsof human society and fear of inevitable punishment Double standards completely ruinedthe system of loyal relations to onersquos neighbor the conservation of the environment andcompliance with the law The post-Soviet period with raging theft and banditry put an endto the soul of a Russian person Therefore a law abiding citizenry can only be achievedthrough the second path through the fear of inevitable punishment And what type of inevi-table punishment for poaching can there be if even those who work for powerful officesare not interested (Aramilev 2013)

While poaching accusations against officials and wealthy businessmen occur throughoutRussia the record in the Altay Republic has been especially gruesome Severalhigh-profile cases were broadly covered in the Russian press and followed keenly byenvironmental organizations In 2003 a local wildlife manager encountered a group

472 K Braden

who illegally hunted from a Mi-8 helicopter a protected herd of ibex and the groupturned out to include Aleksey Saurin who at the time was head of federal managementfor hunting resources (Braden and Prudnikova 2008 15ndash16)

Perhaps the most notorious case was referred to as ldquoAltay-gaterdquo (Castner andEwald 2009) A VIP group had apparently been illegally hunting argali in the Kosh-Agach district when the helicopter crashed (the Altapress was quickly on the scene ofthe accident and published pictures including of the ibex) Among the dead were thepresidential envoy to the State Duma Aleksandr Kosopkin and Viktor Kaimin chair-man of the Committee for the Protection Use and Reproduction of Fauna of theAltay Republic who had earlier promoted trophy hunting in the Altay The four whosurvived included the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Altay Anatoly Ban-nykh chief for the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy and EntrepreneurshipNikolai Kapranov CEO of the Moscow-based industrial environmental companyldquoInekordquo Boris Belinsky and a co-pilot Maxim Kolbin Bannykh resigned his positionafter the crash and he along with Belinsky and Kapranov were charged with illegalhunting The investigation dragged on for two years with the case alternately dis-missed and reopened as environmental groups brought pressure on the governmentThe defendants claimed they had not participated in the actual shooting but only wereguilty of being present on the helicopter On 23 May 2011 the three men wereacquitted and the prosecutor appealed When sent back to local courts it was decidedthat the statute of limitations had expired Commenting on the case Mikhail Kreyn-dlin of Greenpeace-Russia noted ldquoTruly now VIP-poachers have gotten a clear signallsquoall is possible and nothing will come of itrsquo The ordinary citizen caught poachingcan be punished with a real prison term Senior officials are not threatened with any-thingrdquo (Vishnevskiy 2011)

But other high-profile cases have been brought under suspicious circumstancesAleksey Navalny with the Progress Party and an active opponent of Vladimir Putin wasaccused by VOOP (the All-Russian Nature Conservation Society) of poaching becausehe posed for a picture after moose hunting that appeared to be taken in the summerwhile the season does not start until October (The Moscow Times 2014) LyubovrsquoDuyko who heads up the societyrsquos legal affairs sent an official complaint to the pros-ecutorrsquos office Navalny denied the charge Duyko is a prominent member of PutinrsquosUnited Russia Party (along with other members of the VOOP Board) and stood for2014 municipal elections in the Porokhovyye district of St Petersburg as a party mem-ber (Varkhivakhnet 2014)

Some attempts to bring valid complaints against VIP illegal hunters have resulted indifficult times for inspectors or prosecutors One well-known case involved AleksandrDovydenko a hunting guide with the organization ldquoMosoblokhotupravleniyrdquo who losthis job in 2013 and was sentenced to probation in a prison term for abuse of power Hehad apprehended people he accused of illegal hunting including the head of Gazpromrsquosgeology division Gennady Kucherov and the CEO of the firm ldquoTranssetirdquo (Table A1)Questions arose during the trial of whether Dovydenko had shot one person in a groupof poachers whom he claimed were resisting arrest by escaping on their snowmobileAn unemployed hunter who accompanied the others was the only one eventuallycharged and convicted of poaching (Shvarev 2013b) The Dovydenko case receivedmuch attention and inspired a petition via the NGO ldquoChangeorgrdquo to relieve him of thecharges5 A similar incident occurred in Kurgan Oblastrsquo with an inspector who sus-pected police of poaching from snowmobiles reported it and then was arrested himself

Eurasian Geography and Economics 473

and accused of taking bribes in earlier incidents The poaching case against the officialswas never prosecuted (Chelovek i zakon 2014)

Motivations for VIP-poaching

Recreational poaching has been examined by Muth and Bowe (1998) in the UnitedStates and the authors suggested two motivations poaching as ldquothrill killingrdquo andobsession with display of trophies (15ndash17) One aspect that differentiates motivation inthese cases from the Russian context is the element of secretiveness Illegal trophy hun-ters in the American West take pains to hide the evidence from authorities (Archibold2006) while VIP poachers in Russia usually operate in an open fashion

Urbanrsquos (2010) study of the cultures of power in post-communist Russia provides auseful framework for exploring the motivations of Russian VIP poachers While abusesof power by oligarchs and the nouveaux riches have been well documented (see forexample Dawisha 2014 Hoffman 2002) Urbanrsquos study allows a look inside the cultureof the elite through interviews and defines the importance of the sub-culture or ldquoinrdquogroup He suggests that for those on the outside the actions of the elite may seem mis-taken or crazy but ldquofor those sharing the same habitus informed by the same culturalpractices and participating in the same discourse they are regarded as realrdquo (6) FurtherUrban presents a strong case that law and morality do not go hand in hand for those inpower but actually may work in opposition moral criteria are established through inter-personal relationships while the law itself is regarded as a weakness (15ndash16) This argu-ment coincides well with Aramilevrsquos position noted above that once respect for the lawthrough an inner moral compass disappears there is only the of threat punishment thatwill halt lawbreakers

Researchers have suggested that part of Vladimir Putinrsquos mass appeal to citizens ishis role in ldquore-masculinizingrdquo their self-image as Russians (Foxall 2013 Riabov andRiabova 2014) Gender is an important boundary marker for those in power and theattempt to make concrete an ldquousrdquo versus ldquothemrdquo mentality Riabov and Riabova (2014)noted that the traditional attributes of masculinity suggest power while submissioncorrelates with what (in the authorsrsquo view) some Russians perceive as feminine attri-butes (25ndash25) A study of the public images portrayed by Putin in settings that arehyper-masculine (Figure 4) underscores these arguments Foxall has examined a seriesof Kremlin-approved photographs released of Putin that show him in traditional maleactivities associated with outdoor recreation and noted that these have created anldquoAction Manrdquo portrait of a leader (Foxall 2013 134 see also Young 2011) A milita-rized virility is an expression of state power The term associated with such images isnastoyashchiy muzhik in the past referring to the peasant tradition in Russia but nowco-opted by elite such as Putin to suggest it is he who is the ldquorealrdquo Russian guy (Riabovand Riabova 2014)

What might the real ldquoreal muzhikirdquo think of such seemingly hyper-masculineexpressions of power Online forum responses by rank-and-file hunters suggest an atti-tude of contempt While Putin may remain popular with the public press coverage andsocial media discussion of unpunished elite criminals often highlight the bloodthirstynature of the crime the seeming unconcern of the VIP hunters and even public dis-dain6

474 K Braden

Figure 3 Editorial cartoon on privatization of hunting resources by artist Mikhail LarichevVecherniy Peterburg October 20 2009 Translation ldquoSoldrdquoSource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Figure 4 Vladimir Putin on a hunt in the Tyva Republic 2007 Photograph by European PressPhoto AgencySource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Eurasian Geography and Economics 475

Greedy people driven by vanity and after blood hellip not poor people but people in goodpositions (Baydykov 2012)

What land is left to defend Only those asshole oligarchs are lefthellipif the state laws are notfunctioning itrsquos time to fire the officials and their entourages -blogger comments on poach-ing in Samara Luka Nature Park (Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014)

It seems to be that soon the only justice in Russia will be vigilante justice- blogger com-ment on Altay-gate helicopter crash incident (Mir Novostey 2014)

On the theme of poaching a law should be perceived normally as a law by hunters A badlaw is not a law but just derives from rotten conditions hellip Right now order is only upheldthrough repression but the order is spoiled Controllers are caught up in it ten times overfor this bullshit not a society determining its own traditions Blogger ldquodEretikrdquo (Gunsruforum 2013 Shvarev 2013a)

Officials are lawless hellip you canrsquot beat the system you can only be indignant and learnfrom the mistakes of others Blogger Xgod89 (Gunsru forum 2011)

The truth about Russia now is that MNR and the courts do not rule but insolent jerks whomuzzle the courts and prosecutorsrsquo offices are in charge Blogger A Bonch-Bruyevich com-menting on Dovydenko case (Shvarev 2013b)

Some fat urban dyadrsquoka who goes into the forest and finds a bear or moose poached withhelp of hunting guide (Shalygin 2013a)

Conclusion for hunting sustainability ndash the value of a moral compass

I have argued that VIP illegal hunting though not a high percentage of poaching casessets a destructive tone not only because of direct damage to wildlife sustainability butalso because it contributes to corruption of inspectors and prosecution personnel cyni-cism about rule of law and a discouragement to non-elite hunters who are increasinglycut off from prey due to regulations and higher costs

The utility for VIP hunters may not be economic gain but may be the sense of powerenhancement and differentiation from the masses Social science research has suggestedthat unhidden violations of social norms may actually signal power whereas lower powerindividuals are more subject to social constraints (see for example Van Kleef et al2011) There are rewards to elevated power and the establishment of identity in a selectsubgroup of actors Resources are more accessible as is the ability to make decisions onhow to distribute those resources to others Keltner Gruenfeld and Anderson (2003)have cited numerous social-psychological experiments suggesting that elevated powerincreases the likelihood of socially inappropriate actions often showing up in males asldquoprofligate behaviorsrdquo (276ndash277) Given these precepts it is possible that overt incidentsof impunity in wildlife crime by VIP hunters in Russia are signs of status and a way tomaintain group identity a proposition that calls for further investigation

In turn the narrative of VIP poaching solidifies the perception of corruption ndash a phe-nomenon measured in Transparency Internationalrsquos Corruption Perceptions Index(Transparency International 2014) and a sense of hopelessness about the system ndash a factobserved by Russian social scientists such as Kofanova and Petukhov (2006) who sug-gest a narrative about endemic corruption is created in the minds of ordinary RussiansSurvey results show that most Russians believe the state does not act in the interest of

476 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

who illegally hunted from a Mi-8 helicopter a protected herd of ibex and the groupturned out to include Aleksey Saurin who at the time was head of federal managementfor hunting resources (Braden and Prudnikova 2008 15ndash16)

Perhaps the most notorious case was referred to as ldquoAltay-gaterdquo (Castner andEwald 2009) A VIP group had apparently been illegally hunting argali in the Kosh-Agach district when the helicopter crashed (the Altapress was quickly on the scene ofthe accident and published pictures including of the ibex) Among the dead were thepresidential envoy to the State Duma Aleksandr Kosopkin and Viktor Kaimin chair-man of the Committee for the Protection Use and Reproduction of Fauna of theAltay Republic who had earlier promoted trophy hunting in the Altay The four whosurvived included the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Altay Anatoly Ban-nykh chief for the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy and EntrepreneurshipNikolai Kapranov CEO of the Moscow-based industrial environmental companyldquoInekordquo Boris Belinsky and a co-pilot Maxim Kolbin Bannykh resigned his positionafter the crash and he along with Belinsky and Kapranov were charged with illegalhunting The investigation dragged on for two years with the case alternately dis-missed and reopened as environmental groups brought pressure on the governmentThe defendants claimed they had not participated in the actual shooting but only wereguilty of being present on the helicopter On 23 May 2011 the three men wereacquitted and the prosecutor appealed When sent back to local courts it was decidedthat the statute of limitations had expired Commenting on the case Mikhail Kreyn-dlin of Greenpeace-Russia noted ldquoTruly now VIP-poachers have gotten a clear signallsquoall is possible and nothing will come of itrsquo The ordinary citizen caught poachingcan be punished with a real prison term Senior officials are not threatened with any-thingrdquo (Vishnevskiy 2011)

But other high-profile cases have been brought under suspicious circumstancesAleksey Navalny with the Progress Party and an active opponent of Vladimir Putin wasaccused by VOOP (the All-Russian Nature Conservation Society) of poaching becausehe posed for a picture after moose hunting that appeared to be taken in the summerwhile the season does not start until October (The Moscow Times 2014) LyubovrsquoDuyko who heads up the societyrsquos legal affairs sent an official complaint to the pros-ecutorrsquos office Navalny denied the charge Duyko is a prominent member of PutinrsquosUnited Russia Party (along with other members of the VOOP Board) and stood for2014 municipal elections in the Porokhovyye district of St Petersburg as a party mem-ber (Varkhivakhnet 2014)

Some attempts to bring valid complaints against VIP illegal hunters have resulted indifficult times for inspectors or prosecutors One well-known case involved AleksandrDovydenko a hunting guide with the organization ldquoMosoblokhotupravleniyrdquo who losthis job in 2013 and was sentenced to probation in a prison term for abuse of power Hehad apprehended people he accused of illegal hunting including the head of Gazpromrsquosgeology division Gennady Kucherov and the CEO of the firm ldquoTranssetirdquo (Table A1)Questions arose during the trial of whether Dovydenko had shot one person in a groupof poachers whom he claimed were resisting arrest by escaping on their snowmobileAn unemployed hunter who accompanied the others was the only one eventuallycharged and convicted of poaching (Shvarev 2013b) The Dovydenko case receivedmuch attention and inspired a petition via the NGO ldquoChangeorgrdquo to relieve him of thecharges5 A similar incident occurred in Kurgan Oblastrsquo with an inspector who sus-pected police of poaching from snowmobiles reported it and then was arrested himself

Eurasian Geography and Economics 473

and accused of taking bribes in earlier incidents The poaching case against the officialswas never prosecuted (Chelovek i zakon 2014)

Motivations for VIP-poaching

Recreational poaching has been examined by Muth and Bowe (1998) in the UnitedStates and the authors suggested two motivations poaching as ldquothrill killingrdquo andobsession with display of trophies (15ndash17) One aspect that differentiates motivation inthese cases from the Russian context is the element of secretiveness Illegal trophy hun-ters in the American West take pains to hide the evidence from authorities (Archibold2006) while VIP poachers in Russia usually operate in an open fashion

Urbanrsquos (2010) study of the cultures of power in post-communist Russia provides auseful framework for exploring the motivations of Russian VIP poachers While abusesof power by oligarchs and the nouveaux riches have been well documented (see forexample Dawisha 2014 Hoffman 2002) Urbanrsquos study allows a look inside the cultureof the elite through interviews and defines the importance of the sub-culture or ldquoinrdquogroup He suggests that for those on the outside the actions of the elite may seem mis-taken or crazy but ldquofor those sharing the same habitus informed by the same culturalpractices and participating in the same discourse they are regarded as realrdquo (6) FurtherUrban presents a strong case that law and morality do not go hand in hand for those inpower but actually may work in opposition moral criteria are established through inter-personal relationships while the law itself is regarded as a weakness (15ndash16) This argu-ment coincides well with Aramilevrsquos position noted above that once respect for the lawthrough an inner moral compass disappears there is only the of threat punishment thatwill halt lawbreakers

Researchers have suggested that part of Vladimir Putinrsquos mass appeal to citizens ishis role in ldquore-masculinizingrdquo their self-image as Russians (Foxall 2013 Riabov andRiabova 2014) Gender is an important boundary marker for those in power and theattempt to make concrete an ldquousrdquo versus ldquothemrdquo mentality Riabov and Riabova (2014)noted that the traditional attributes of masculinity suggest power while submissioncorrelates with what (in the authorsrsquo view) some Russians perceive as feminine attri-butes (25ndash25) A study of the public images portrayed by Putin in settings that arehyper-masculine (Figure 4) underscores these arguments Foxall has examined a seriesof Kremlin-approved photographs released of Putin that show him in traditional maleactivities associated with outdoor recreation and noted that these have created anldquoAction Manrdquo portrait of a leader (Foxall 2013 134 see also Young 2011) A milita-rized virility is an expression of state power The term associated with such images isnastoyashchiy muzhik in the past referring to the peasant tradition in Russia but nowco-opted by elite such as Putin to suggest it is he who is the ldquorealrdquo Russian guy (Riabovand Riabova 2014)

What might the real ldquoreal muzhikirdquo think of such seemingly hyper-masculineexpressions of power Online forum responses by rank-and-file hunters suggest an atti-tude of contempt While Putin may remain popular with the public press coverage andsocial media discussion of unpunished elite criminals often highlight the bloodthirstynature of the crime the seeming unconcern of the VIP hunters and even public dis-dain6

474 K Braden

Figure 3 Editorial cartoon on privatization of hunting resources by artist Mikhail LarichevVecherniy Peterburg October 20 2009 Translation ldquoSoldrdquoSource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Figure 4 Vladimir Putin on a hunt in the Tyva Republic 2007 Photograph by European PressPhoto AgencySource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Eurasian Geography and Economics 475

Greedy people driven by vanity and after blood hellip not poor people but people in goodpositions (Baydykov 2012)

What land is left to defend Only those asshole oligarchs are lefthellipif the state laws are notfunctioning itrsquos time to fire the officials and their entourages -blogger comments on poach-ing in Samara Luka Nature Park (Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014)

It seems to be that soon the only justice in Russia will be vigilante justice- blogger com-ment on Altay-gate helicopter crash incident (Mir Novostey 2014)

On the theme of poaching a law should be perceived normally as a law by hunters A badlaw is not a law but just derives from rotten conditions hellip Right now order is only upheldthrough repression but the order is spoiled Controllers are caught up in it ten times overfor this bullshit not a society determining its own traditions Blogger ldquodEretikrdquo (Gunsruforum 2013 Shvarev 2013a)

Officials are lawless hellip you canrsquot beat the system you can only be indignant and learnfrom the mistakes of others Blogger Xgod89 (Gunsru forum 2011)

The truth about Russia now is that MNR and the courts do not rule but insolent jerks whomuzzle the courts and prosecutorsrsquo offices are in charge Blogger A Bonch-Bruyevich com-menting on Dovydenko case (Shvarev 2013b)

Some fat urban dyadrsquoka who goes into the forest and finds a bear or moose poached withhelp of hunting guide (Shalygin 2013a)

Conclusion for hunting sustainability ndash the value of a moral compass

I have argued that VIP illegal hunting though not a high percentage of poaching casessets a destructive tone not only because of direct damage to wildlife sustainability butalso because it contributes to corruption of inspectors and prosecution personnel cyni-cism about rule of law and a discouragement to non-elite hunters who are increasinglycut off from prey due to regulations and higher costs

The utility for VIP hunters may not be economic gain but may be the sense of powerenhancement and differentiation from the masses Social science research has suggestedthat unhidden violations of social norms may actually signal power whereas lower powerindividuals are more subject to social constraints (see for example Van Kleef et al2011) There are rewards to elevated power and the establishment of identity in a selectsubgroup of actors Resources are more accessible as is the ability to make decisions onhow to distribute those resources to others Keltner Gruenfeld and Anderson (2003)have cited numerous social-psychological experiments suggesting that elevated powerincreases the likelihood of socially inappropriate actions often showing up in males asldquoprofligate behaviorsrdquo (276ndash277) Given these precepts it is possible that overt incidentsof impunity in wildlife crime by VIP hunters in Russia are signs of status and a way tomaintain group identity a proposition that calls for further investigation

In turn the narrative of VIP poaching solidifies the perception of corruption ndash a phe-nomenon measured in Transparency Internationalrsquos Corruption Perceptions Index(Transparency International 2014) and a sense of hopelessness about the system ndash a factobserved by Russian social scientists such as Kofanova and Petukhov (2006) who sug-gest a narrative about endemic corruption is created in the minds of ordinary RussiansSurvey results show that most Russians believe the state does not act in the interest of

476 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

and accused of taking bribes in earlier incidents The poaching case against the officialswas never prosecuted (Chelovek i zakon 2014)

Motivations for VIP-poaching

Recreational poaching has been examined by Muth and Bowe (1998) in the UnitedStates and the authors suggested two motivations poaching as ldquothrill killingrdquo andobsession with display of trophies (15ndash17) One aspect that differentiates motivation inthese cases from the Russian context is the element of secretiveness Illegal trophy hun-ters in the American West take pains to hide the evidence from authorities (Archibold2006) while VIP poachers in Russia usually operate in an open fashion

Urbanrsquos (2010) study of the cultures of power in post-communist Russia provides auseful framework for exploring the motivations of Russian VIP poachers While abusesof power by oligarchs and the nouveaux riches have been well documented (see forexample Dawisha 2014 Hoffman 2002) Urbanrsquos study allows a look inside the cultureof the elite through interviews and defines the importance of the sub-culture or ldquoinrdquogroup He suggests that for those on the outside the actions of the elite may seem mis-taken or crazy but ldquofor those sharing the same habitus informed by the same culturalpractices and participating in the same discourse they are regarded as realrdquo (6) FurtherUrban presents a strong case that law and morality do not go hand in hand for those inpower but actually may work in opposition moral criteria are established through inter-personal relationships while the law itself is regarded as a weakness (15ndash16) This argu-ment coincides well with Aramilevrsquos position noted above that once respect for the lawthrough an inner moral compass disappears there is only the of threat punishment thatwill halt lawbreakers

Researchers have suggested that part of Vladimir Putinrsquos mass appeal to citizens ishis role in ldquore-masculinizingrdquo their self-image as Russians (Foxall 2013 Riabov andRiabova 2014) Gender is an important boundary marker for those in power and theattempt to make concrete an ldquousrdquo versus ldquothemrdquo mentality Riabov and Riabova (2014)noted that the traditional attributes of masculinity suggest power while submissioncorrelates with what (in the authorsrsquo view) some Russians perceive as feminine attri-butes (25ndash25) A study of the public images portrayed by Putin in settings that arehyper-masculine (Figure 4) underscores these arguments Foxall has examined a seriesof Kremlin-approved photographs released of Putin that show him in traditional maleactivities associated with outdoor recreation and noted that these have created anldquoAction Manrdquo portrait of a leader (Foxall 2013 134 see also Young 2011) A milita-rized virility is an expression of state power The term associated with such images isnastoyashchiy muzhik in the past referring to the peasant tradition in Russia but nowco-opted by elite such as Putin to suggest it is he who is the ldquorealrdquo Russian guy (Riabovand Riabova 2014)

What might the real ldquoreal muzhikirdquo think of such seemingly hyper-masculineexpressions of power Online forum responses by rank-and-file hunters suggest an atti-tude of contempt While Putin may remain popular with the public press coverage andsocial media discussion of unpunished elite criminals often highlight the bloodthirstynature of the crime the seeming unconcern of the VIP hunters and even public dis-dain6

474 K Braden

Figure 3 Editorial cartoon on privatization of hunting resources by artist Mikhail LarichevVecherniy Peterburg October 20 2009 Translation ldquoSoldrdquoSource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Figure 4 Vladimir Putin on a hunt in the Tyva Republic 2007 Photograph by European PressPhoto AgencySource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Eurasian Geography and Economics 475

Greedy people driven by vanity and after blood hellip not poor people but people in goodpositions (Baydykov 2012)

What land is left to defend Only those asshole oligarchs are lefthellipif the state laws are notfunctioning itrsquos time to fire the officials and their entourages -blogger comments on poach-ing in Samara Luka Nature Park (Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014)

It seems to be that soon the only justice in Russia will be vigilante justice- blogger com-ment on Altay-gate helicopter crash incident (Mir Novostey 2014)

On the theme of poaching a law should be perceived normally as a law by hunters A badlaw is not a law but just derives from rotten conditions hellip Right now order is only upheldthrough repression but the order is spoiled Controllers are caught up in it ten times overfor this bullshit not a society determining its own traditions Blogger ldquodEretikrdquo (Gunsruforum 2013 Shvarev 2013a)

Officials are lawless hellip you canrsquot beat the system you can only be indignant and learnfrom the mistakes of others Blogger Xgod89 (Gunsru forum 2011)

The truth about Russia now is that MNR and the courts do not rule but insolent jerks whomuzzle the courts and prosecutorsrsquo offices are in charge Blogger A Bonch-Bruyevich com-menting on Dovydenko case (Shvarev 2013b)

Some fat urban dyadrsquoka who goes into the forest and finds a bear or moose poached withhelp of hunting guide (Shalygin 2013a)

Conclusion for hunting sustainability ndash the value of a moral compass

I have argued that VIP illegal hunting though not a high percentage of poaching casessets a destructive tone not only because of direct damage to wildlife sustainability butalso because it contributes to corruption of inspectors and prosecution personnel cyni-cism about rule of law and a discouragement to non-elite hunters who are increasinglycut off from prey due to regulations and higher costs

The utility for VIP hunters may not be economic gain but may be the sense of powerenhancement and differentiation from the masses Social science research has suggestedthat unhidden violations of social norms may actually signal power whereas lower powerindividuals are more subject to social constraints (see for example Van Kleef et al2011) There are rewards to elevated power and the establishment of identity in a selectsubgroup of actors Resources are more accessible as is the ability to make decisions onhow to distribute those resources to others Keltner Gruenfeld and Anderson (2003)have cited numerous social-psychological experiments suggesting that elevated powerincreases the likelihood of socially inappropriate actions often showing up in males asldquoprofligate behaviorsrdquo (276ndash277) Given these precepts it is possible that overt incidentsof impunity in wildlife crime by VIP hunters in Russia are signs of status and a way tomaintain group identity a proposition that calls for further investigation

In turn the narrative of VIP poaching solidifies the perception of corruption ndash a phe-nomenon measured in Transparency Internationalrsquos Corruption Perceptions Index(Transparency International 2014) and a sense of hopelessness about the system ndash a factobserved by Russian social scientists such as Kofanova and Petukhov (2006) who sug-gest a narrative about endemic corruption is created in the minds of ordinary RussiansSurvey results show that most Russians believe the state does not act in the interest of

476 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

Figure 3 Editorial cartoon on privatization of hunting resources by artist Mikhail LarichevVecherniy Peterburg October 20 2009 Translation ldquoSoldrdquoSource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Figure 4 Vladimir Putin on a hunt in the Tyva Republic 2007 Photograph by European PressPhoto AgencySource Permission was obtained from the copyright holder

Eurasian Geography and Economics 475

Greedy people driven by vanity and after blood hellip not poor people but people in goodpositions (Baydykov 2012)

What land is left to defend Only those asshole oligarchs are lefthellipif the state laws are notfunctioning itrsquos time to fire the officials and their entourages -blogger comments on poach-ing in Samara Luka Nature Park (Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014)

It seems to be that soon the only justice in Russia will be vigilante justice- blogger com-ment on Altay-gate helicopter crash incident (Mir Novostey 2014)

On the theme of poaching a law should be perceived normally as a law by hunters A badlaw is not a law but just derives from rotten conditions hellip Right now order is only upheldthrough repression but the order is spoiled Controllers are caught up in it ten times overfor this bullshit not a society determining its own traditions Blogger ldquodEretikrdquo (Gunsruforum 2013 Shvarev 2013a)

Officials are lawless hellip you canrsquot beat the system you can only be indignant and learnfrom the mistakes of others Blogger Xgod89 (Gunsru forum 2011)

The truth about Russia now is that MNR and the courts do not rule but insolent jerks whomuzzle the courts and prosecutorsrsquo offices are in charge Blogger A Bonch-Bruyevich com-menting on Dovydenko case (Shvarev 2013b)

Some fat urban dyadrsquoka who goes into the forest and finds a bear or moose poached withhelp of hunting guide (Shalygin 2013a)

Conclusion for hunting sustainability ndash the value of a moral compass

I have argued that VIP illegal hunting though not a high percentage of poaching casessets a destructive tone not only because of direct damage to wildlife sustainability butalso because it contributes to corruption of inspectors and prosecution personnel cyni-cism about rule of law and a discouragement to non-elite hunters who are increasinglycut off from prey due to regulations and higher costs

The utility for VIP hunters may not be economic gain but may be the sense of powerenhancement and differentiation from the masses Social science research has suggestedthat unhidden violations of social norms may actually signal power whereas lower powerindividuals are more subject to social constraints (see for example Van Kleef et al2011) There are rewards to elevated power and the establishment of identity in a selectsubgroup of actors Resources are more accessible as is the ability to make decisions onhow to distribute those resources to others Keltner Gruenfeld and Anderson (2003)have cited numerous social-psychological experiments suggesting that elevated powerincreases the likelihood of socially inappropriate actions often showing up in males asldquoprofligate behaviorsrdquo (276ndash277) Given these precepts it is possible that overt incidentsof impunity in wildlife crime by VIP hunters in Russia are signs of status and a way tomaintain group identity a proposition that calls for further investigation

In turn the narrative of VIP poaching solidifies the perception of corruption ndash a phe-nomenon measured in Transparency Internationalrsquos Corruption Perceptions Index(Transparency International 2014) and a sense of hopelessness about the system ndash a factobserved by Russian social scientists such as Kofanova and Petukhov (2006) who sug-gest a narrative about endemic corruption is created in the minds of ordinary RussiansSurvey results show that most Russians believe the state does not act in the interest of

476 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

Greedy people driven by vanity and after blood hellip not poor people but people in goodpositions (Baydykov 2012)

What land is left to defend Only those asshole oligarchs are lefthellipif the state laws are notfunctioning itrsquos time to fire the officials and their entourages -blogger comments on poach-ing in Samara Luka Nature Park (Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014)

It seems to be that soon the only justice in Russia will be vigilante justice- blogger com-ment on Altay-gate helicopter crash incident (Mir Novostey 2014)

On the theme of poaching a law should be perceived normally as a law by hunters A badlaw is not a law but just derives from rotten conditions hellip Right now order is only upheldthrough repression but the order is spoiled Controllers are caught up in it ten times overfor this bullshit not a society determining its own traditions Blogger ldquodEretikrdquo (Gunsruforum 2013 Shvarev 2013a)

Officials are lawless hellip you canrsquot beat the system you can only be indignant and learnfrom the mistakes of others Blogger Xgod89 (Gunsru forum 2011)

The truth about Russia now is that MNR and the courts do not rule but insolent jerks whomuzzle the courts and prosecutorsrsquo offices are in charge Blogger A Bonch-Bruyevich com-menting on Dovydenko case (Shvarev 2013b)

Some fat urban dyadrsquoka who goes into the forest and finds a bear or moose poached withhelp of hunting guide (Shalygin 2013a)

Conclusion for hunting sustainability ndash the value of a moral compass

I have argued that VIP illegal hunting though not a high percentage of poaching casessets a destructive tone not only because of direct damage to wildlife sustainability butalso because it contributes to corruption of inspectors and prosecution personnel cyni-cism about rule of law and a discouragement to non-elite hunters who are increasinglycut off from prey due to regulations and higher costs

The utility for VIP hunters may not be economic gain but may be the sense of powerenhancement and differentiation from the masses Social science research has suggestedthat unhidden violations of social norms may actually signal power whereas lower powerindividuals are more subject to social constraints (see for example Van Kleef et al2011) There are rewards to elevated power and the establishment of identity in a selectsubgroup of actors Resources are more accessible as is the ability to make decisions onhow to distribute those resources to others Keltner Gruenfeld and Anderson (2003)have cited numerous social-psychological experiments suggesting that elevated powerincreases the likelihood of socially inappropriate actions often showing up in males asldquoprofligate behaviorsrdquo (276ndash277) Given these precepts it is possible that overt incidentsof impunity in wildlife crime by VIP hunters in Russia are signs of status and a way tomaintain group identity a proposition that calls for further investigation

In turn the narrative of VIP poaching solidifies the perception of corruption ndash a phe-nomenon measured in Transparency Internationalrsquos Corruption Perceptions Index(Transparency International 2014) and a sense of hopelessness about the system ndash a factobserved by Russian social scientists such as Kofanova and Petukhov (2006) who sug-gest a narrative about endemic corruption is created in the minds of ordinary RussiansSurvey results show that most Russians believe the state does not act in the interest of

476 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

its citizens bureaucrats are motivated by personal gain and corruption penetrates allspheres of society (Kofanova and Petukhov 2006 29) This narrative of corruption andcrime is supported by a Russian mass media that ldquovigorously relaysrdquo a normativesystem of a criminal world engendering disrespect for the judiciary and for formal lawsand an impression that the most successful people in Russia today display the mostnegative behavior models (Iurevich and Ushakov 2010 21ndash22 26ndash27) SimilarlyDawisha (2014) has explored the ldquosistemardquo inside the Russian hierarchy in her bookPutinrsquos Kleptocracy noting that the risk of activities is transferred from the elite to thestate but the rewards are privatized thus allowing those in power ldquoto act withimpunityrdquo (332ndash333) Given Putinrsquos arguments in favor of fighting corruption how canthe actions of insider elites be reconciled with evidence of environmental lawbreaking

Dawisha (2014) rightly notes ldquoThis is not to say that the Russian ruling elite doesnot see the benefits of a robust rule-of-law systemrdquo (9) While her exploration focusedon elite actions in international financial circles I make a similar argument of a selectiveapproach to application of domestic Russian laws on illegal hunting Protections againstprosecution for some in the government and rights conditional upon loyalty to theregime ensure that those in power can act in a predatory manner Informal associationsuseful friends and privileged access to resources are hallmarks of the insider ldquosistemardquo(Ledeneva 2013) As empirical data are presented in the future on violators apprehendedand convicted under the new 2012 hunting laws the number of cases involving peoplein power should be instructive to observe

Feldman and Blokov (2009) found in their survey that personalities mattered interms of public perception the most influential people for solving environmental ques-tions cited by respondents were those in political power business leaders ministry offi-cials and heads of NGOs (737) Precisely because high-profile people have sway overthe public in terms of societal norms for environmental law that fact might be put touse for improved observance of the 2012 regulations I suggest a new tool for socialnorming with respect to hunting laws in Russia publicity for well-known Russians whodemonstrate a new type of power and masculine image by adhering to regulations Vla-dimir Putin for example noted in an Outdoor Life interview ldquoToday when hunting andfishing are more like a tribute to traditions a sort of hobby enthusiasts of these outdooractivities should guide themselves by the lsquoDo No Harmrsquo principlerdquo (Young 2011 58)In his examination of how to improve law enforcement in the realm of environmentalnorms Sverdyukov (2014) wrote ldquothe mechanism of moral influence on offenders ispractically not used it is true but it is necessary to rework the levers of moral actionrdquo(160)

While some of the initiators of OD-ROS were people of power7 myriad bloggersfrom online hunting social forums picked up and repeated the text that the organizers ofthe 2014 OD-ROS Conference used in launching the effort

In past decades a host of serious problems have occurred in the sphere of Russian huntingLife has shown that the government is not capable of solving them The wider huntingcommunity can and should undertake a discussion of these problems identify solutionsand formulate constructive proposals for organs of state power hellip the first huntersrsquo confer-ence was the initiative of ordinary hunters unburdened by property or hunting lands withone goal to conserve the historic right of Russians to hunt This was not first given underSoviet power but much earlier ndash by tradition a significant part of the culture and in theblood of the Russian people (Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 477

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Dr Margaret Diddams of Seattle Pacific University for assistance withsocial psychology sources and Jennifer Castner of The Altai Project and geographer Dr JaimeKooser for reviewing drafts of this work

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes1 The rights of indigenous groups especially those designated of the North Siberia the Altay

Republic and the Far East have been described through sections of the hunting regulationsand amendments of various years While these populations are not the focus of this study theauthor recognizes the importance of the survival of indigenous cultures access to traditionalhunting grounds and land use rights for minority people in the Russian Federation

2 The focus here is on recreational hunting with firearms and excludes the myriad of illegalfishing cases covered in the Russian press Likewise use of snares and other traps particu-larly by poachers has been very controversial and warrants additional discussion

3 No breakdown by organizations versus individuals was available after the year 2011 at thetime of this writing Often the hunting leases run by private owners are large recreational cen-ters such as the Dubakinskiy resort in Leningrad Oblastrsquo owned by Nikolai Shamalov abanker whom Forbes dubbed one of the richest men in Russia The site accessible with ahelicopter landing pad includes a well-appointed cottage (ldquoVIP-Houserdquo) with televisionsauna and billiard rooms available for rental during moose season The newspaper Izvestiyareported on 26 September 2012 that three millionaire businessmen including Alfa BankrsquosPyotr Aven had invested 80 million rubles into creation of a hunting enterprise ldquoMedvedrsquordquo inArghangelrsquosk Oblastrsquo for VIP hunters a closed hunting club specializing in brown bear wildboar deer moose and Siberian stag (maral) The brainchild of businessman VladimirButorin the enterprise is located in the town of Bereznik where Butorinrsquos companies also areinvolved in agriculture and forest products This was the second enterprise invested in byAven who had also registered in Moscow a hunting club called ldquoHunting Groundrdquo financedby his private investment (Izvestiya 26 September 2012 Accessed 25 July 2014 httpizvestiarunews536084)

4 Butorin for example has not always done well with local farmers but has argued he isbringing access electrical power and other infrastructure as well as a fund for social pro-grams into the area Visser Mamonova and Spoor (2012) argued that the benefits of landtransfers have been mixed and laws while purportedly passed to cut down on monopolieshave instead strengthened the hands of large-scale land owners often shored up by corruptlocal officials (925)

5 As of August 2014 the case was still unresolved and Mr Dovydenko was consideringwhether he should appeal based on an amnesty declared by the Duma in honor of the 20thanniversary of the Russian Constitution

6 In addition to hunting news and environmental web sites one called Brakonrsquoerovnet has beenestablished to both to support legitimate hunters and to report news photographs and videoson poaching incidents

7 For example Nikolay Valuev former boxing champion elected to the Duma in 2011 underPutinrsquos party Valuev himself had been accused of poaching but the Arkhangelrsquosk regionalprosecutor had refused to consider the case He was added in 2014 to MNRrsquos Public Councilon Hunting

ReferencesAllen Dan 2014 ldquoTotal Public Hunting Land Acres Available by State for USFS BLM amp State

Owned Landsrdquo Backcountry Chronicles July 18 Accessed July 19 2014 httpwwwbackcountrychroniclescompublic-hunting-land

478 K Braden

Angarova Galina 2011 ldquoSosnovka 2011 in Altairdquo October 20 Accessed January 9 2015httppacificenvironmentorgblog201110sosnovka-2011-in-altai

Apalrsquokov Sergey and Vadim Averin 2008 ldquoPodlinnyye osobennosti natsionalrsquonoy okhoty [RealFeatures of National Hunt]rdquo Ogonyek Number 52 Accessed July 3 2014 httpwwwogoniokcomarchive1997448704-04-07

Aramilev Vladimir 2013 ldquoBrakonerrsquostvo kak dvigatel progressa [Poaching as the Engine of Pro-gress]rdquo Russkiy okhotnichiy zhurnal October 28 Accessed July 27 2014 httphuntandfishrumagazine201311_noyabr_2013brakonerstvo_kak_dvigatel_progressa

Archibold Randal C 2006 ldquoPoachers in the West Hunt Big Antlers to Feed Big Egosrdquo The NewYork Times December 9 Accessed January 10 2015 httpwwwnytimescom20061209us09poachhtmlpagewanted=allamp_r=0

Baydykov Sergey 2012 ldquoIspovedrsquo yegerya [Confessions of a Huntsman]rdquo Altapressru AccessedJuly 19 2014 httpaltapressrustory88655

Beitman Aaron 2013 ldquoPoaching and Organized Crime in Russiardquo TraCCC George MasonUniversity April 10 Accessed July 12 2014 httpttraccgmuedu20130410poaching-and-organized-crime-in-russia

Benderskiy E V 2012 ldquoOb ogranichenii maksimalrsquonoy ploshchadi arendovannykh ugodiy [Onthe Limiting of Maximum Area for Leased Hunting Lands]rdquo Okhotnikiru February 13Accessed July 24 2014 httpwwwohotnikiruhuntingsocietysfarmsarticle20120213634474-ob-ogranichenii-maksimalnoy-ploschadi-arendovannyih-ugodiyhtml

Braden Kathleen 2008 ldquoPersonal Reflections on the Fate of Wilderness Reserves in RussiardquoInternational Journal of Wilderness 34 39ndash43

Braden Kathleen and Natalya Prudnikova 2008 ldquoThe Challenge of Ecotourism Development inthe Altay Region of Russiardquo Tourism Geographies 10 1ndash21

Brashares Justin S Briana Abrahms Kathryn J Fiorella Christopher D Golden Cheryl EHojnowski Ryan A Marsh Douglas J McCauley Tristan A Nunez Katherine Seto andLauren Withey 2014 ldquoWildlife Decline and Social Conflictrdquo Science 345 (6195) 376ndash378

Bratashova Natalrsquoya Ivanovna 2011 ldquoUgolovno-pravovyye i kriminologicheskiye aspekty borrsquobys prestupleniyami v sfere okhrany zhivotnogo mira [Penal Laws and Criminological Aspectsof the Fight with Criminals in the Sphere of Conservation of the Animal World]rdquo Disserta-tion Judicial Science Saratov Judicial Institute Accessed June 30 2014 httpdispodeliserupars_docsdiser_refs706956169561pdf

Castner Jennifer and Alyson Ewald 2009 ldquoAltai Project Fatal Crash Exposes Russiarsquos GuiltySecretrdquo Earth Island Journal Spring 21

Chelovek i zakon 2014 ldquoOkhota na okhotinspektora Yakova Beresina [The Hunt for HuntingInspector Yakov Beresin]rdquo June 18 Accessed January 10 2015 httpchelovek-onlineruzakonarticleobshchestvookhota-na-okhotinspektora-yakova-berezina

Chizhova Lyubovrsquo 2012 ldquoNovyye pravila okhoty v Rossii [New Rules of Hunting in Russia]rdquoRadio Svoboda June 26 Accessed February 8 2015 httpwwwsvobodaorgarticleprintview24627268html

Coghlan Andy 2014 ldquoPoaching on a Par with Arms Traderdquo New Scientist 221 (2957) 10Dawisha Karen 2014 Putinrsquos Kleptocacy Who Owns Russia New York Simon amp SchusterDegtyarev Kirill 2010 Interview with Valeriy Kuzenkov editor of Okhota ldquoEconomics of Hunt-

ingrdquo Translated by Nadezhda Tsyba Russian Geographical Society httpintrgorunewseconomics-of-hunting

Eliason Stephen L 2004 ldquoAccounts of Wildlife Law Violators Motivations and Rationaliza-tionsrdquo Human Dimensions of Wildlife 9 119ndash131 doi10108010871200490441775

Federal State Statistical Service of Russian Federation 2012 Sotsialrsquono-ekonomicheskiye indika-tory bednosti v 2008ndash2011 gg [Socioeconomic Indicators of Poverty 2008ndash2011] AccessedJuly 10 2014 httpwwwgksrubgdreglb12_110Mainhtm

Feldman David L 2012 The Politics of Environmental Policy in Russia Northampton MAEdward Elgar

Feldman David L and Ivan Pavlovich Blokov 2009 ldquoPromoting an Environmental CivilSociety Politics Policy and Russiarsquos Post-1991 Experiencerdquo Review of Policy Research 26729ndash759

Fokin Sergey 2013 Interview with AE Bersenyev Director of Hunting Department for the Min-istry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation Okhotnikiru July 25

Eurasian Geography and Economics 479

2013 Accessed June 5 2015 httpwwwohotnikiruhuntingsocietyssocietysarticle20130725514520-chto-zhdet-rossiyskih-ohotnikovhtml

Forsyth Craig J and Thomas A Marckese 1993 ldquoThrills and Skills A Sociological Analysis ofPoachingrdquo Deviant Behavior 14 157ndash172

Foxall Andrew 2013 ldquoPhotographing Vladimir Putin Masculinity Nationalism and Visuality inRussian Political Culturerdquo Geopolitics 18 132ndash156 doi101080146500452012713245

FreeNews Volga 2013 ldquoZhiteli Lysogorskogo rayona obratilisrsquo k Vladimiru Putinu s zhaloboy naVladimir Stepanova i Vasiliya Tarasova [Residents of Lisogorskiy Region Address VladimirPutin with Complaint about Vladimir Stepanov and Vasiliy Tarasov]rdquo FreeNews Volga Fe-bruary 12 Accessed January 10 2015 httpfn-volgarunewsviewid12996

Gamov Aleksandr 2014 ldquoOkhota i politika gosudarstvennyy kompleks lsquoZavidovorsquo otmechaetsvoye 85-letiye [Hunting and Politics The State Complex of lsquoZavidovorsquo Marks 85 Years]rdquoNational Explorer Accessed July 12 2014 httpwwwnexplorerrunews__12865htm

Gomzikova Svetlana 2012 ldquoMinprirody sozdalo idealrsquonyye usloviya dlya VIP-brakonrsquoerov [Min-istry of Natural Resources Created Ideal Conditions for VIP-Poachers]rdquo SvobodnayaPressaJune 19 Accessed January 10 2015 httpsvpressarusocietyarticle56251

Gorbachev Albert 2014 ldquoNe mogut ili ne khotyat [Arenrsquot Able or Donrsquot Want]rdquo OkhotnikiruJune 5 Accessed August 19 2014 httpwwwohotnikiruhuntingsocietyssocietysarticle20140605641606-ne-mogut-ili-ne-hotyathtml

Government of the United Kingdom 2014 Declaration London Conference on the Illegal Wild-life Trade February 12ndash13 Accessed May 1 2014 httpswwwgovukgovernmentuploadssystemuploadsattachment_datafile281289london-wildlife-conference-declaration-140213pdf

Greenpeace Russia 2012 ldquoSpravka o novykh pravilakh okhoty [Information on New HuntingRules]rdquo June 15 Accessed July 21 2014 httpwwwgreenpeaceorgrussiaruactioncyber-activist1stop-regal-huntingnewrules

Gunsru 2011 ldquoOkhotoved obvinivshiy chinovnikov i brakonrsquoerstve osuzhden na 3 goda [Hunt-ing Guide Accused by Officials Sentenced to 3 Years]rdquo Discussion Forum March 19Accessed January 10 2015 httpforumgunsruforummessage175778995html

Gunsru 2013 ldquoVIP-brakonrsquoery lyubyat kogda mnogo krovi [VIP-Poachers Love It When ThereIs Much Blood]rdquo Discussion Forum November 27 Accessed July 30 2014 httpforumgunsruforummessage2641221503-3html

Gurov Viktor 2011 ldquoBrakonrsquoerstvo ndash natsionalrsquonaya zabava ili tragediya [Poaching ndash ANational Pastime or Tragedy]rdquo Rossiyskaya okhotnichrsquoya gazeta [Russian Hunting Newspa-per] 3 (859) January 1 Accessed July 9 2014 httpviptrophycomarticles2040

Hoffman David 2002 The Oligarchs Wealth and Power in the New Russia New York PublicAffairs

Homes Volker ed 2004 No Licence to Kill The Population and Harvest of Musk Deer andTrade in Musk in the Russian Federation and Mongolia A TRAFFIC Europe Report Brus-sels Traffic Europe

Ioffe Grigory Tatyana Nefedova and Kirsten De Beurs 2012 ldquoLand Abandonment in RussiardquoEurasian Geography and Economics 53 527ndash549 httpdxdoiorg1027471539-7216534527

Ioffe Grigory Tatyana Nefedova and Ilya Zaslavsky 2006 The End of Peasantry The Disinte-gration of Rural Russia Pittsburgh PA University of Pittsburgh Press

Ishigeyev V S and A Ya Bondar 2013 ldquoBrakonrsquoerstvo kak noviy vid kriminalrsquonogo profes-sionalizma [Poaching as a New Type of Criminal Professionalism]rdquo Gosudarstvo i pravoYuridicheskiye Nauki [The State and Rights Juridical Sciences] 3 38ndash40

Iurevich A V and D V Ushakov 2010 ldquoMorality in Todayrsquos Russiardquo Russian Social ScienceReview 51 13ndash37 ldquoSotsiologicheskii zhurnalrdquo ldquoNravstvennostrsquo v sovremennoi RossiirdquoSotsiologicheskii zhurnal 2009 no 1 pp 70ndash86 A publication of the Institute of SociologyRussian Academy of Sciences Translated by Kim Braithwaite Translation reprinted fromSociological Research 49 (3)

Kasparek Max 2011 Biodiversity Conservation in the Russian Portion of the Altai-Sayan Ecore-gion United Nations Development ProgrammeGlobal Environmental FacilityGovernment ofthe Russian Federation PIMS 1685

Keltner Dacher Deborah H Gruenfeld and Cameron Anderson 2003 ldquoPower Approach andInhibitionrdquo Psychological Review 110 265ndash284 doi1010370033-295X1102265

480 K Braden

Kofanova E N and V V Petukhov 2006 ldquoPublic Opinion of Corruption in Russiardquo RussianSocial Science Review 47 23ndash45 Translated from the Russian Center for Public OpinionResearch (VTsIOM) the Interdisciplinary Academic Center for Social Sciences (InterCenter)and the Academy of the National Economy (ANE) ldquoObshchestvennoe mnenie o korruptsii vRossiirdquo Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya Ekonomicheskie i sotsialrsquonye peremeny2005 no 1 pp 4ndash16 A publication of VTsIOM InterCenter and ANE

Komarov Boris (Zersquoev Wolfson) 1980 ldquohellip Swans Like The Winter Snowsrdquo In The Destructionof Nature in the Soviet Union White Plains NY ME Sharpe

Kuumlhl Aline Natasha Balinova Elena Bykova Yuri N Arylov Alexander Esipov Anna ALushchekina and E J Milner-Gulland 2009 ldquoThe Role of Saiga Poaching in Rural Com-munities Linkages between Attitudes Socio-economic Circumstances and Behaviourrdquo Bio-logical Conservation 142 1442ndash1449 doi101016jbiocon200902009

Kuzenkov Valeriy Petrovich ed 2011 ldquoO neobkhodimosti reorganizatsii sistemy gosu-darstvennogo upravleniya okhrany i ratsionalrsquonogo ispolrsquozovaniya zhivotnogo mira Rossii [Onthe Necessity of System Reorganization of State Management and Rational Use of RussiarsquosAnimal World]rdquo Okhota October 10 Accessed June 15 2014 httpohota-kuzenkovruindexphpoption=com_contentampview=articleampid=1ampItemid=13

Ledeneva Alena V 2013 ldquoRussiarsquos Practical Norms and Informal Governance The Origins ofEndemic Corruptionrdquo Social Research 80 1135ndash1162

Lizer Yuliyana (2014) ldquoBrakonrsquoerstvo v Rossii chto izmenil ukhodyashchiy god [Poaching inRussia What Changed in the Past Year]rdquo Otkrytaya Rossiya December 24 Accessed January13 2015 httpopenrussiaorgpostview1723

Lomanovoy N V ed 2010 ldquoSostoyaniye okhotnichrsquoikh resursov s Rossiyskoy Federatsii v2008ndash2010 gg [Condition of Hunting Resources of Russian Federation from 2008ndash2010]rdquoOkhotnichrsquoi zhivotnyye Rossii [Hunting Animals of Russia] Vol 9 Moscow Ministry ofNatural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation

Makarova Elena Aleksandrovna 2014 Nekotoryye osobennosti sistemy dikiye zhivotnyye-brakonrsquo-ery [Some Characteristics of the System of Wild Animal Poaching] Dissertation in BiologyMinistry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation Russian State Agronomy CorrespondenceUniversity Moscow

Mir Novostey 2014 No 39 (926) Accessed January 10 2015 httpmirnovruarhivmn926mn04-2php

MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation) 2012a Krasnayakniga Rossiyskoy Federatsii Zhivotnyye [Red Book of the Russian Federation ndash Animals] Fe-bruary 21 Accessed February 8 2015 httpwwwmnrgovruregulatorydetailphpID=128273

MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation) 2012b ldquoPrikaz obustanovlenii maksimalrsquonoy ploshchadi okhotnichrsquoikh ugodiy v otnoshenii kotorykh mogutbytrsquo zaklyucheny okhotkhozyaystvennyye soglasheniya [Order on Establishment of MaximumArea of Hunting Grounds in Connection with Which Can Be Concluded Hunting Manage-ment Agreements]rdquo January 20 Accessed July 18 2014 httpwwwmnrgovrunewsdetailphpID=128075

MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation) 2013 Gosdoklad osostoyanii i ob okruzhayushcheyi sredy Rossiyskoy Federatsii v 2013 godu [GovernmentReport on Condition of and Conservation of the Environment of the Russian Federation in2013] Accessed January 13 2015 httpwwwecogosdokladru2013

MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation) 2014 Strategiyarazvitiya okotnichrsquoego khozyaystva v Rossiyskoy Federatsii do 2030 goda (Strategy for theDevelopment of the Hunting Economy of the Russian Federation to the Year 2030) N-1216-rJuly 3 Accessed August 16 2014 httpwwwrgru20140707oxot-xoz-site-dokhtml

Moiseyenko Yuriy 2004 ldquoPoprosit li Yelrsquotsin proshcheniya u losey [Will Yeltsin Ask forMoosersquos Forgiveness]rdquo Novaya gazeta February 9 Accessed July 5 2015 http2004novayagazetarunomer200409nn09n-s29shtml

Muth Robert M John F Bowe Jr 1998 ldquoIllegal Harvest of Renewable Natural Resources inNorth America Toward a Typology of the Motivations for Poachingrdquo Society amp NaturalResources 11 9ndash24

Eurasian Geography and Economics 481

Newell Joshua and John Simeone 2014 ldquoRussiarsquos Forests in a Global Economy How Con-sumption Drives Environmental Changerdquo Eurasian Geography and Economics 55 37ndash70doi101080153872162014926254

Novaya gazeta 2014 ldquoBezotvetnyye barany opyatrsquo u nachalrsquostva pod priletsom [Officials AgainTake Aim at Defenseless Sheep]rdquo May 7 Accessed July 1 2014 httpwwwnovayagazetarusociety64304html

Okhotnikiru 2013 ldquoUstav obshchestvennogo dvizheniya lsquoRossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuzrsquo [Charterof Social Movement lsquoRussian Hunting Unionrsquo]rdquo March 1 Accessed June 30 2014 httpwwwohotnikiruhuntingsocietyssocietysarticle20130301638205-ustav-od-roshtml

Palazy L C Bonenfant J M Gaillard and F Courchamp 2012 ldquoResponse Rarity TrophyHunting and Ungulatesrdquo Animal Conservation 15 16ndash17 doi101111j1469-1795201200521x

Perovskiy Mikhail 2011 ldquoZa novuyu Glavokhotu [For a New Glavokhota]rdquo Okhotnikiru Au-gust 23 Accessed July 1 2014 httpwwwohotnikirulawarticle20110823616699-za-novuyu-glavohotuhtml

Polyanskaya Yekaterina 2013 ldquoPervyy shag v borrsquobye s brakonrsquoerstvom sdelan [The First Stepin the Fight Against Poaching Is Done]rdquo Pravdaru June 6 2013 Accessed August 5 2014httpwwwpravdarusocietyhow06-06-20131160079-gftyiv-0

Popova Nadezhda 2011 ldquoZapadnya dlya ruchogo lisenka Rossiyu porazila strannaya boleznrsquoimya kotoroy-VIP-okhota [Trap for a Tame Fox Russia is Struck by a Strange Illness calledVIP-Hunting]rdquo Argumentyru August 3 Accessed July 9 2014 httpargumentiruprinttopthemen300118484

Racheva Elena 2009 ldquoChernoye safari [Black Safari]rdquo Novaya gazeta Accessed July 15 httpwwwnovayagazetarusociety46425html

Reeve Rosalind 2006 ldquoWildlife Trade Sanctions and Compliance Lessons from the CITESRegimerdquo International Affairs 82 881ndash897

Riabov Oleg and Tatiana Riabova 2014 ldquoThe Remasculinization of Russiardquo Problems of Post-Communism 61 23ndash35 doi102753PPC1075-8216610202

Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz 2013 ldquoMission Statementrdquo Accessed July 1 2014 httpwwwrorsruruindexphp

Rossiyskiy okhotnichiy soyuz 2014 ldquoItogi konferentsii [Results of the Conference]rdquo AccessedAugust 2 2014 httppocoxoтcoюзpфnewsitogi_konferencii2014-03-02-82

Safonova Tatiana 2007 ldquoThe Professional Ethos of Rangers in Russian Nature Reservesrdquo ActaBorealia 24 44ndash58 doi10108008003830701411613

Serdyukov Valeriy 2011 ldquoOligarkhi i okhota [Oligarchs and Hunting]rdquo Vedomosti November21 Accessed July 22 2014 httpwwwrosprescomfinance9286

Shalygin Andrey 2013a ldquoKommentariy [Commentary]rdquo Response to July 22 2013 interviewwith Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Sergey Donskoy appearing in Rossiskayagazeta and reprinted in National Explorer website Accessed January 9 2015 httpwwwnexplorerruprintnews__11396htm

Shalygin Andrey ed 2013b ldquoShtrafy za narusheniye pravil okhoty 2013 [Fines for DisobeyingHunting Laws 2013]rdquo National Explorer July 3 Accessed June 30 2014 httpwwwnexplorerrunews__11358htm

Shalygin Andrey 2014 Stratgiya razvitiya okhotnichrsquoego khozyaystva Rossii do 2030 goda-pochemu vsye nedovolrsquony no ne mogut skazatrsquo chem immeno [The Strategy for Developmentof the Hunting Economy in Russia to the Year 2030 Why Everyone Is Not Happy but CannotSay Exactly With What]rdquo National Explorer March 14 Accessed August 2 2014 httpwwwnexplorerrunews__12387htm

Shvarev Aleksandr 2013a ldquoVIP-brakonrsquoery lyubyat kogda mnogo krovi [VIP-Poachers Love ItWhen There Is Much Blood]rdquo Rosbalt Moscow August 8 Accessed June 30 2014 httpwwwrosbaltrumoscow201308261168234html

Shvarev Aleksandr 2013b ldquoVIP-brakonrsquoery skoro posadyat na desyatrsquo let pomeshavshego imokhotoveda [VIP-Poachers Will Soon Imprison for Ten Years the Hunting Guide Who Inter-fered]rdquo Okhotnikiru August 29 Accessed August 1 2014 httpwwwohotnikiruarchivenews20130829639550-vipbrakoneryi-skoro-posadyat-na-desyat-let-pomeshavshego-im-ohotovedahtml

482 K Braden

Sinyakov Aleksey 2012 ldquoV Rossii legalizuyut okhotu s vertolyetov [In Russia Hunting withHelicopter is Legalized]rdquo Okhotnikiru June 11 Accessed September 10 2014 httpwwwohotnikiruarchivenews20120611635796-v-rossii-legalizuyut-ohotu-s-vertoletovhtml

Sistema Opoveshcheniya 2014 ldquoV parke lsquoSamarskaya Lukarsquo protsvetayut korruptsiya brakonrsquoer-stvo bespredel [In the lsquoSamarskaya Lukarsquo Park Corruption Unlimited Poaching Is Thriving]rdquoJune 21 Accessed July 10 2014 httpraznesiinfoblogpost12294

Smolrsquoyakova Tatrsquoyana 2013 ldquoOkhota za brakonrsquoera [Hunt for Poachers]rdquo Interview with SergeyDonskoy Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Rossiyskaya gazeta July 22 AccessedJuly 10 2014 httpwwwrgru20130722donskoyhtml

South Nigel and Tanya Wyatt 2011 ldquoComparing Illicit Trades in Wildlife and Drugs AnExploratory Studyrdquo Deviant Behavior 32 538ndash561

State Duma of the Russian Federation Adopted July 3 2013 Federal Law 494994-5 ldquoO vne-senii izmeneniy v Federalrsquoniy zakon lsquoOb okhote i o sokhranenii okhotnichrsquoikh resursov i ovnesenii izmeneniy v otdelrsquonye zakonodatelrsquonye akty Rossiyskoy Federatsiirsquo i Kodeks Ros-siyskoy Federatsii ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniyakh [On Amending the Federal LawlsquoOn Hunting and Conservation of Hunting Resources and on Amendments to Various Legisla-tive Acts of the Russian Federationrsquo and the Code of Administrative Offences]rdquo httpapidumagovruapitranscript494994-5

Stepanova Darrsquoya 2014 ldquoPochti 3000 ugolovnykh del svyazannykh s nezakonnoy okhotoynapravleno v sud [Nearly 3000 Criminal Cases Connected with Illegal Hunting Sent toCourt]rdquo Vremya Novosti Nizhnego Novgoroda i Nizhegorodskoy oblasti July 19 AccessedAugust 1 2014 httpwwwvremyanrunewspochti_3000_ugolovnyh_del_svjazannyh_s_nezakonnoj_ohotoj_napravleno_v_sudhtml

Stoecker Sally and Ramziya Shakirova eds 2013 Environmental Crime and Corruption in Rus-sia Federal and Regional Perspectives Abingdon Routledge

Sverdyukov Nikolay 2014 ldquoSovershenstvovaniye pravookhranitelrsquonoy deyatelrsquonosti po obe-spechiyu ekologicheskoi bezopastnosti v Rossii [Improvement of Law Enforcement Activitiesin the Field of Environmental Security in Russia]rdquo Vestnik IKBFU 3 155ndash161

Tekeyev Khalimat 2014 ldquoMinprirody khochet legalizovatrsquo brakonrsquoerskyyu okhotu na altayskikharkharov [Ministry of Natural Resources Wants to Legalize Poaching of Altay Sheep]rdquo July7 Accessed January 9 2015 httpwwwgreenpeaceorgrussiarunewsblogsgreen-planetblog49840

The Altai Project 2014 ldquoBalancing Conservation and Hunting in Altairdquo July 10 Accessed Jan-uary 9 2015 httpwwwaltaiprojectorg201407balancing-conservation-and-hunting-in-altai

The Moscow Times 2014 ldquoEcologists Suspect Opposition Leader Navalny of Poachingrdquo Febru-ary 19 Accessed January 9 2015 httpwwwthemoscowtimescomnewsarticleecologists-suspect-opposition-leader-navalny-of-poaching494848html

Theile Stephanie 2003 Fading Footprints The Killing and Trade of Snow Leopards A TRAF-FIC Report Cambridge Traffic International

Traffic International 2013 ldquoEndangered Animal Trafficking Officially Criminalised in RussiardquoAccessed January 10 2015 httpwwwtrafficorghome2013621endangered-animal-trafficking-officially-criminalised-in-rushtml

Transparency International 2014 The 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index Accessed January 122015 httpwwwtransparencyorgcpi2014

United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics 2013 Occupational Employmentand Wages May 2013 Accessed January 10 2015 httpwwwblsgovoescurrentoes333031htm

United States Fish amp Wildlife Service 2011 National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation Accessed June 1 2014 httpswwwcensusgovprod2012pubsfhw11-natpdf

Urban Michael 2010 Cultures of Power in Post-Communist Russia Cambridge CambridgeUniversity Press

Van Kleef Gerben A Astrid Homan Catrin Finkenauer Seval Gundemir and Eftychia Stamkou2011 ldquoBreaking the Rules to Rise to Power How Norm Violators Gain Power in the Eyes ofOthersrdquo Social Psychological and Personality Science 2 500ndash507 doi1011771948550611398416

Varkhivakhnet 2014 ldquoSpisok kandidatov na praymeriz lsquoYedinoy Rossiirsquo dlya munitsipalrsquonykhvyborov 2014 v Peterburge [List of Candidates for Primary of lsquoUnited Russiarsquo for Municipal

Eurasian Geography and Economics 483

Elections 2014 in Peterburg]rdquo June 6 Accessed July 25 2014 httpvarhivahnetpress-relizyspisok-kandidatov-na-prajjmeriz-edinojj-rosii-dlya-municipalnykh-vyborov-2014-v-peterburgehtml

Vaysman A L S P Matveychuk and S I Minrsquokov 2012 Dostoinstva i nedostatki pravovogoregulirovaniya i borrsquoby s narusheniyami v oblasti okhrany i ispolrsquozovaniya resursov dikikhzhivotnykh [Pros and Cons of Legal Regulations and the Fight With Violators in the Area ofConservation and Use of Wild Animal Resources] Vladivostok World Wide Fund for NatureTraCCC httptracccgmuedupdfsBook_Vaisman_2012_all20(2)pdf

Vishnevskiy Boris 2011 VIP-okhotniki Bannykh Kapranov i Belinskiy Altayskiy sud opravdalbrakonrsquoerov [VIP-Hunters Bannykh Kapranov and Belinsky Altay Court Acquits Poachers]Bellona Ecologiya i pravo May 24 Accessed August 21 2014 httpwwwbellonaruarticles_ruarticles_2011arhar

Visser Oane Natalie Mamonova and Max Spoor 2012 ldquoOligarchs Megafarms and LandReserves Understanding Land Grabbing in Russiardquo Journal of Peasant Studies 39 899ndash931doi101080030661502012675574

Volyanskiy E V 2014 ldquoNormativno-pravovyye aspekty gosudarstvennogo regulirovaniya okhotyi okhotnichrsquoikh ugodiy [Normative-Legal Aspects of State Regulation of Hunting and HuntingGrounds]rdquo Munitsipalrsquonaya ekonomika i upravleniye [Municipal Economics and Manage-ment] January 1 Accessed July 24 2014 httpegouaparuru-ruissue20140101ampprint

Von Essen Erica Hans Peter Hansen Helena Nordstroumlm Kaumlllstroumlm M Nils Peterson and TarlaRai Peterson 2014 ldquoDeconstructing the Poaching Phenomenon A Review of Typologies forUnderstanding Illegal Huntingrdquo British Journal of Criminology 54 (4) 632ndash651

Walker Amanda 2012 ldquoRussia Bans lsquoSportrsquo of Shooting Sleeping Bearsrdquo Sky News (UK) April29 Accessed January 10 2015 httpnewsskycomstory13701russia-bans-sport-of-shooting-sleeping-bears

Weiner Douglas 1999 A Little Corner of Freedom Russian Nature Protection from Stalin toGorbachev Berkeley University of California Press

WWF-Russia (World Wide Fund for Nature) 2014a ldquoBrakonrsquoerov lishayut prava okhoty [Poach-ers Deprived of Right to Hunt]rdquo April 22 Accessed July 24 2014 httpwwfruresourcesnewsarticle12344

WWF-Russia (World Wide Fund for Nature) 2014b ldquoWWF i Siti napravyat na pre-dotvraschyeniye brakonrsquoerstva na Altae i Kamchatkye 5 mln rublyey [WWF and CitibankFund Direct 5 million Rubles to Fight Against Poaching in Altay and Kamchatka]rdquo April 3Accessed July 12 2014 httpwwwwwfruresourcesnewsarticle12272

Wyatt Tanya 2009 ldquoExploring the Organization of Russia Far Eastrsquos Illegal Wildlife Trade TwoCase Studies of the Illegal Fur and Illegal Falcon Tradesrdquo Global Crime 10 144ndash154

Yemelyanova Raisa 2014 ldquoOmskiy brakonrsquoyer zaplatit 160 tysyach za ubiystvo dvukh kosulrsquo izaytsa-belyaka [Omsk Poacher Will Pay 160 Thousand for Killing of Two Deer and Hare]rdquoOmskregion July 1 Accessed January 10 2015 httpomskregioninfoitemaspid=24758

Young Gayne 2011 ldquoOne-on-One with Vladimir Putinrdquo Outdoor LifeJunendashJuly 56ndash63Yurkova N A N I Almashev and N I Tokova 2007 ldquoOb otvetstvennosti za brakonrsquoerstvo v

respublike altay spravochnoye posobiye [On the Responsibility for Poaching in the AltaiRepublic Handbook]rdquo Fund for Sustainable Development of Altai and United NationsDevelopment Programme

Zaitseva Mariya 2013 ldquoTsarskaya okhota pochemu lsquoslivkirsquo rossiyskogo obshchestva tak lyubyatokhotitrsquosya v zapovednykh mestakh [Tsarrsquos Hunt Why Do Security Personnel of RussianSociety So Love to Hunt in Reserves]rdquo Pasmi Ru September 20 Accessed July 20 2014httppasmiruarchive96715

484 K Braden

Appendix

1

Table

A1

Sam

plerepo

rtsalleging

VIP-poachingin

post-Sov

ietperiod

(doesno

tim

plyconv

ictio

n)

Year

Location

Position(s)of

VIP(s)at

timeincident

reported

Source(s)

Web

addressAccessof

each

verified

11Janu

ary20

15

1997

Yaroslavl

Oblastrsquo

Ananinvillage

bullPresidentRussian

Federation

bullGov

erno

rYaroslavl

Oblastrsquo

Argum

enty

ifakti926

200

7Kom

prom

atRu

ecoethicsru

httpwwwcom

prom

at

rupage_21

495htm

httpgazetaaifruon

lineaif14

04

14_0

1

2001

Khakasiya

Repub

lic

Karatoshsko

-Ineyskiy

reserve

bullActor

andchairRussian

Cultural

Fou

ndation

bullFormer

speakerof

Russian

Dum

a

Nov

ayaG

azetaRu210

200

5http20

05nov

ayagazetarunom

er

2005

10n

n10

n-s01shtm

l

2002

AltayRepub

lic

Tarhatin

skiy

Lake

bullFormer

assistantto

VladimirPutin

and

BorisYeltsin

VitaTsentrzashchity

prav

zhivotny

khhttpwwwvitaorgruam

usem

ent

huntblack_listh

tm

2004

VladimirOblastrsquoSuzdal

bullOwnerof

newspaper

Mosko

vskiy

Kom

somoletsform

ermem

berof

the

Pub

licChamberRussian

Federation

Moscow

huntingclub

Zavtra204

200

4Kom

prom

atRu

wwwcom

prom

atrupage_1

4416

htm

httpzavtrarucontentv

iew200

4-02

-04

51

Nov

ogorod

Oblastrsquo

bullGov

erno

rNov

gorodregion

bullPresidentRussian

Federation

Argum

enty

ifakti926

200

7Kom

prom

atRu

httpwwwcom

prom

at

rupage_21

495htm

httpgazetaaifruon

lineaif14

04

14_0

1

(Con

tinued)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 485

TableA1

(Con

tinued)

Year

Location

Position

(s)of

VIP(s)at

timeincident

repo

rted

Sou

rce(s)

Web

addressAccessof

each

verified

11Janu

ary20

15

2005

Kursk

Oblastrsquo

Korenevskydistrict

Kursk

Pop

pyforest

reserve

bullChairCom

mittee

onYou

thSpo

rts

Drugd

ruga

onlin

e127

200

4httpwwwddd

kurskrunum

ber48

6new000

657

AltayRepub

lic

Shavlinskyreserve

bullDepartm

entHeadof

Con

servationamp

Hun

tingResou

rcesMinistryof

Agriculture

VitaTsentrzashchity

prav

zhivotny

kh529

200

7httpvitaorgrunew200

7may29-

huntershtm

Khakasiya

Repub

lic

Karatoshsko

-Ineyskiy

reserve

bullHead

MinistryforCivilDefense

and

EmergencySitu

ationsRussia

VitaTsentrzashchity

prav

zhivotny

kh529

200

7httpvitaorgrunew200

7may29-

huntershtm

2006

AltayKray

Cho

yadistrict

bullChairmanBarnaul

City

Cou

ncil

Bankfaks10

022006

httpwwwbankfaxrunews38

014

2008

Kam

chatka

Kray

Krono

tskiyreserve

bullFormer

head

ofFederal

Taxatio

nService

Volgo

grad

region

LifeNew

s128

201

0httplifenew

srunew

s10

930

2009

AltayRepub

licKosh

Agach

district

ldquoAltay-

gaterdquoincident

bullPresidentialenvo

yto

theState

Dum

abullDeputyGov

erno

rAltayRepub

licbullAltayRepub

licCom

mittee

toprotect

wild

life

bullOfficerof

lower

houseof

Parliament

Dum

astafferdeputy

head

ofRussian

President

Medvedev

bullPolicychiefcoun

selState

Dum

aCom

mittee

onEcono

mics

bullGov

erno

rAltayRepub

lic

New

YorkTim

es112

200

9p

6Nov

ayagazeta

(Aleksey

Tarasov)

Apr15

20

11p

8

httpwwwnytim

escom

200

901

12

worldeurop

e12

russiahtm

l_r=0

httpoldno

vayagazetarudata2011

04008

htm

l

Sakha

Repub

licRuspres

302

200

9httprosprescomcorruption37

27

(Con

tinued)

486 K Braden

TableA1

(Con

tinued)

Year

Location

Position

(s)of

VIP(s)at

timeincident

repo

rted

Sou

rce(s)

Web

addressAccessof

each

verified

11Janu

ary20

15

bullSecretary

ofregion

alUnitedRussiaParty

bullPresidentialenvo

yto

Central

federal

district

Krasnod

arKray

Ady

gea

Repub

licCaucasus

Biosphere

Reserve

bullPrimeMinisterAdy

geaRepub

licbullDeputyfinanceministerAdy

geaRepub

licbullDirectorof

hydroresourcesAdy

gea

Repub

lic

Pasmiru920

201

3httppasm

iruarchive96

715

Irku

tskOblastrsquoLake

BaikalBolshaya

Golou

stno

ye

Gov

erno

rIrku

tskOblastkilledin

helicop

ter

crash

Pasmiru920

201

3RBK

516

200

9httppasm

iruarchive96

715

httptoprbcrusociety1605

200

930

4213

shtml

Buryatiy

aRepub

lic

Kho

rinskiydistrict

Khu

dakskiybiosph

ere

reserve

bullUnitedRussiaParty

electiv

eDeputy

PeoplersquosKhu

ralof

Buryatia

BMK

Inform

atsion

noye

agentstvo902

200

9httpwwwbaikal-mediaru

newsconfl

icts561

42

Irku

tskOblastrsquo

bullGov

erno

rIrku

tskOblastrsquo

Argum

enty

RU

516

200

9httpargumentirucomnew

s200905

16148

11Yam

al-N

enets

Auton

omou

sOkrug

bullDeputychiefof

staffof

Taz

district

New

srucom

6172009

httpwwwnew

srucomrussia

17jun2

009sm

oljarh

tml

2010

Moscow

OblastrsquoPotlovo

villageZarayskiy

huntingreserve

bullOAO

ldquoBымпeлК

oмrdquo(Vim

pelcom

Ltd)

mob

ileph

one

bullBusinessm

anldquoК

oлoм

нaмeж

peгиoн

гaзrdquo

(Kolom

namezhregiong

az)gascompany

bullMun

icipal

district

depu

tyLuk

hovitskiy

region

VIPTroph

y12

0520

10httpviptroph

ycomarticles19

64

Ekh

oMoskv

y12

2120

10

(Con

tinued)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 487

TableA1

(Con

tinued)

Year

Location

Position

(s)of

VIP(s)at

timeincident

repo

rted

Sou

rce(s)

Web

addressAccessof

each

verified

11Janu

ary20

15

Moscow

Oblastrsquo

Vysok

ovodistrict

bullHeadof

Interior

Affairs

ofDmitrov

district

bullHeadof

indu

strial

geolog

yadministration

httpwwwechomskrunews

7357

28-echohtml

Sakha

Repub

licbullYakut

depu

tyGosdu

ma

bullMem

berof

theBoard

ofldquoA

LROSArdquo

diam

ondmininggrou

p

Rossiyskaya

gazeta

528

201

0httpwwwrgru201

005

28vertolet

html

Tyum

enOblastrsquoSurgu

tbullDeputyhead

ofUnitedRussiaParty

Surgu

tregion

Tyum

enskiyeizVestiy

a10

20

2010

httpoldt-iruarticle164

50

2011

Volgo

grad

Oblastrsquo

Kam

yshindistrict

Shcherbakov

skayanature

park

bullDirectorof

build

ingsupp

lyforKam

yshin

town

Inform

atsion

noye

agentstvo

Vysota10

20507

201

4httpv1

02ruaccidents44

598html

Sakha

Repub

licbullGov

erno

rof

Arkhang

elsk

Region

ResursLesru409

2011

httpwwwresurslesrunewsindex

htmlid=18

5Volgo

grad

Oblastrsquo

Olkho

viyreserve

bullDeputyof

district

DUMA

UnitedRussia

Party

Volgo

grad-Tim

es209

2011

httpvo

lgog

rad-tim

esrustories18

8

2012

Amur

Oblastrsquo

bullVicemayor

ofBlago

veshchensk

bullRosselkho

znadzorexecutive

bullSpecialistregion

aloh

otup

ravleniya

(hun

tingmanagem

ent)

NTV

216

201

4New

srucom

211201

4httpwwwntvruno

vosti8

4295

6httpwwwnew

srucomarchrussia

11feb2014vipoacherh

tml (C

ontin

ued)

488 K Braden

TableA1

(Con

tinued)

Year

Location

Position

(s)of

VIP(s)at

timeincident

repo

rted

Sou

rce(s)

Web

addressAccessof

each

verified

11Janu

ary20

15

Krasnoy

arsk

Kray

Stolbyreserve

bullHeadof

police

Kolosov

skiy

region

Okh

otarybalkavOmskoy

Oblasti117

201

3httpoи

ppф

zakondocum41-2013-

01-15-04

-45-38

673

-201

3-01

-17-11-

05-32html

Kirov

Oblastrsquo

bullProgressParty

ampRussian

Opp

osition

Coo

rdinationCou

ncil

Moscow

Tim

esFeb19

20

14httpwwwth

emoscowtim

escom

newsarticle494

848html

2013

SverdlovskOblastrsquo

Bog

dano

vich

reserve

bullState

Dum

adepu

tymem

berof

Liberal

Dem

ocratic

Party

URARU

111201

3httpurarucon

tentsvrd11-01-20

13

news10

5215

1694

htm

l

Saratov

Oblastrsquo

Nov

oburasskiy

region

bullFirstvice

presidentof

mun

icipal

administration

Nov

oburasskiy

region

New

srucom

822

201

3httpwwwnew

srucomrussia

22aug2

013oh

otahtml

Arkhang

elsk

Oblastrsquo

bullDeputyState

Dum

aUnitedRussiaParty

andfamou

sbo

xer20

14mem

berstate

huntingcoun

cil

MK

95let523

201

3httpwwwm

krusocial2

01305

23

8588

13-valuev-ub

il-medvedy

a-chestnohtml

Kaliningrad

Oblastrsquo

Vishtyn

etsnature

park

bullRepresentativeof

barassociationof

lawyers

Nov

yyeko

lyesa208

201

3httpwwwrud

niko

vcomarticlephp

ELEMENT_ID=22

241

Saratov

Oblastrsquo

Lysog

orskiy

region

bullProsecutorforSaratov

Oblast

bullSaratov

district

courtofficial

Vzglyad-info12

0220

13httpwwwvzsarrunews20

131202

jiteli-raiona-pojalov

alis-pytiny-na-

brakon

erstvo

-vysok

ih-chino

vhtml

Omsk

Oblastrsquo

Isilk

ulskom

district

bullMinisterof

Con

structionandTranspo

rtOmsk

Oblast

bullGeneral

Directorof

ldquoOmskob

lvod

oprovo

drdquobulldepu

tychiefengineer

ldquoOmskob

lvod

oprovo

drdquo

Omskinform

530

201

3httpom

skinform

runews56

598

(Con

tinued)

Eurasian Geography and Economics 489

TableA1

(Con

tinued)

Year

Location

Position

(s)of

VIP(s)at

timeincident

repo

rted

Sou

rce(s)

Web

addressAccessof

each

verified

11Janu

ary20

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