150 Nature Sanctuaries : Soviets Give Endangered Wildlife a Helping Hand

Volodya, a barrel-chested forester, uncorked a bottle of brandy with his teeth, gulped a glass with his meat-and-potato stew and warmed to a favorite topic: hunting for wild boar.

Although his usual job is to protect the wildlife on one of the best-known nature preserves in the Soviet Union, boars are considered a menace, to be killed on sight.

Most foresters dispatch the twin-tusked wild pigs at a distance, with a rifle, but that’s not the approach always taken by Vladimir Petrovich Vasilenko, known as Volodya.

“I’m a sporting man,” Volodya said. “In hunting boar, first of all, the dogs are wild with excitement and that fires me up. When my dog, Volchok, corners the boar and grabs him by one ear, that’s enough for me to grab the other ear and plunge a knife in his side.”

Volodya, a legendary woodsman, may be the most colorful character in the 138 square miles of wilderness that make up the Oka Preserve, but he is not typical. For his rugged style contrasts with the gentle, nurturing ways of the specialists who are devoting their lives to quiet observation and measures to restore species that are, or were, on the endangered list.

Binoculars and Notebooks

Rather than Volodya’s eight-inch hunting knife in its elk-hide scabbard, the university-trained scientists at the preserve prefer binoculars and notebooks and a big supply of patience to do their work.

As a result, Oka Preserve, about 135 miles southeast of Moscow, has an international reputation for breeding rare cranes, preserving the European bison, increasing the dwindling ranks of the falcon and golden eagle.

Oka Preserve is one of 150 nature sanctuaries around the country run by the department of preserves in the Interior Ministry. Although government expenditures in the Soviet Union are not made public, the size of the system would indicate that the preservation of rare and endangered species, both flora and fauna, does have top-level backing.

Unlike U.S. national parks, however, tourists are not allowed on the preserves. At the Oka facility, they can visit an adjacent protected zone and hunt or fish there with permission of the park authorities.

Despite official backing, Oka Preserve seems to be operating with some degree of austerity. Staff members said, for example, that they received only 20% of the hay and other feed required for the herd of protected bison and have to scramble to provide the remainder from their own hay fields or by swapping commodities with other state institutions in the region.

The crane breeding station still occupies “temporary” quarters seven years after it was opened. A permanent building is under construction. Many of the offices and a small museum are housed in buildings used by a glass factory before the 1917 revolution.

Dedicated Scientists

And despite their university degrees, the scientists at Oka say their pay is less than the average factory worker in Ryazan, about 25 miles to the southwest. Still, that does not deter the specialists from their appointed rounds in the pine and birch forest.

One of Volodya’s lunch guests, Yuri Mikhailovich Markin, explained why:

“If you’re interested in nature, you’ve got to help it,” he said, while observing birds at the edge of a swamp not far from Volodya’s log cabin.

The bearded Markin, 29, was graduated from the University of Voronezh in 1979 with a strong interest in cranes, the graceful water birds whose numbers have been shrinking in the Soviet Union and around the world.

Now he specializes in study of the gray crane, a bird that likes the bogs and pine forests in Volodya’s section of the preserve. He often rises at 3 a.m. in the summer to listen to cranes calling, with a loud shriek, half an hour before sunrise.

‘Work Is Fascinating’

“This is a highly satisfying job,” he mused. “The pay is low, that’s true, but the work is fascinating. You use your head as a scientist but often you must use your hands to get by in the outdoors.”

By watching the gray cranes, Markin said, he may learn more about their breeding and nesting habits that will help to save more exotic varieties in the crane family.

That is precisely the task of the preserve’s crane breeding station, headed by Vladimir Pantchenko, a graduate of the University of Odessa.

“Some cranes have almost disappeared and we must learn how to breed them if they are to survive,” Pantchenko said.

Siberian Crane Rarest Breed

The Siberian crane is the rarest of the seven species that live in the Soviet Union, he said, with only an estimated 300 in the world.

Of the 35 Siberian cranes in captivity, he added, 13 are at the Oka Preserve.

Pantchenko said the Siberian cranes probably are dwindling because of poor wintering conditions in China and India, where they generally migrate.

By putting Siberian crane eggs in the nests of gray cranes, however, the naturalists hope the Siberian chicks will learn from their “foster parents” to remain within the Soviet Union on their winter trips south.

Rare Egg Trade

The preserve cooperates with George Archibald, the head of the International Crane Foundation, by sending crane eggs or chicks to him at his Baraboo, Wis., headquarters and, in turn, receiving eggs from 20 Siberian cranes there.

Pantchenko’s wife, Iraida Mikhailovna, is a specialist in frogs who received a candidate’s degree in biology, equivalent to an American doctorate, for her findings from field work on the preserve.

Alexander (Sasha) and Maria (Masha) Onufrenya, another husband-wife team of scientists, met while they were students at the University of Gorky. They have been working on the preserve for 13 years.

For Masha, it was coming home, since her father had been a forester and she grew up on the land.

Specializing in Desmans

“Since childhood, I was always attracted by animals,” said the brown-haired, dimpled Masha. She studies squirrels while her husband specializes in an exotic animal called vykhukhol in Russian and desman from its Latin name.

The desman is a small, furry animal with a long, blunt-tipped nose, a lizard-like tail and such weak eyes that it can barely distinguish between light and dark. It builds its nest under water but seeks high ground each spring when the rivers flood and its den becomes submerged deeper than a desman can dive.

With Masha’s help, Sasha catches them, takes their measurements, tags them and then releases them. Although their numbers were so scarce in 1935 that the preserve was established to prevent their extinction, there are now an estimated 10,000 in the region.

Sasha and Masha, who are both in their 30s, spend each spring in the heart of the preserve, staying in primitive outposts, to be near the animals.

Results Are Exciting

“Sometimes it’s discouraging but at other times you see a picture emerging, like a negative developing in a darkroom, and you feel excited to see the results,” said Masha.

“You have to love your work to do it,” said the preserve’s director, Syvatoslav Preklonsky, who first came to the area more than 30 years ago as a graduate student in biology.

Preklonsky himself is an expert on wolves, and his specialty is apparently the subject of the main controversy about wildlife preservation in the Soviet Union.

Wolves are detested by sheep farmers and reindeer herdsmen. In the late 1960s, animal lovers rallied around the wolf and “it almost became a protected species,” according to Preklonsky.

Now, however, preserve regulations require that forest guards destroy any wolves they encounter.

Unhappy About Rule

“We’re not happy about that rule, so it’s enforced without enthusiasm,” the director noted.

The preserve that he oversees is bordered by the Pra and Oka rivers and has the largest flooded area of any of the 150 preserves in the nation. As a result, many animals are forced into relatively small plots of higher ground each spring and scientists can easily observe them.

Another scientist working at the preserve, Viktor Pavlovich Ivanchev, specializes in woodpeckers. He took a job tending the furnace in a kindergarten for a year while he was waiting for one of the 22 openings for professionals.

Ivanchev, 26, said the salaries for university graduates range from 120 to 165 rubles a month (about $168 to $231 at current exchange rates.)

Possession of a candidate’s degree would add 60 rubles (about $84) to the monthly pay.

Soviet workers average about 180 rubles a month (about $252) and a bus driver in Moscow earns as much as 300 rubles (about $420).

Nevertheless, director Preklonsky said he receives stacks of letters every day seeking work at the preserve. Every Communist Party leader who visits the place says he would like to retire there and work as a forester, he added.

But it’s tough to get hired, according to Volodya the boar-killer, who worked 10 years in a truck factory before he found happiness as a forest guard.

“We’re trying to preserve this place for our children--and for yours,” Preklonsky told an American visitor.