The Russian Taiga

[brobear]

*I am posting this topic under 'Bears in General' because this directly affects several bear species/subspecies. 
 

[brobear]

www.climatechangenews.com/2019/10/08/siberia-illegal-logging-feeds-chinas-factories-one-woman-fights-back/

A five-hour, back-breaking drive along rugged forest roads west of Irkutsk, Siberia’s capital, past lines of pines, birches and berries, the air turns acidic.

“Smell the difference?” Lyubov Alikina, the 59-year old defender of Siberia’s forests, asks from the front-seat of the truck. “That’s the smell of freshly cut wood.”

The dense curtain of trees, only interrupted by a sandy trail, grows thinner, until eventually it opens on a bare patch of land the size of three football pitches. Camped at the back of the truck, a berry-picker who has been foraging in the area for 10 years, swears.

Loggers have taken all of the cedar, leaving scrawny pines and eviscerated soil in their wake. It is the worst case of illegal cedar felling Alikina has seen. The trees have been taken, in all likelihood she says, to feed enormous demand from Chinese factories.

[brobear]

www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/05/climate-change-is-moving-russias-taiga-north-scientists-warn-a69170

Climate Change Is Moving Russia's Taiga North, Scientists Warn.

The Taiga forests of Siberia have expanded north toward the Arctic as a result of warming temperatures over the past four decades, a team of Russian and Finnish scientists has said.

Climate change is heating Russia at a rate more than twice the global average, thawing what was once permanently frozen ground in the Arctic tundra, the Environment Ministry warned last year. This has set off massive releases of gases like methane and carbon dioxide — previously stored in the permafrost — into the atmosphere.

[brobear]

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/siberian-wildfires-are-larger-globes-total-blazes-year-combined-180978433/

More Than 40 Million Acres of Land Have Burned in Siberia.
Russia has seen an increasing severity of wildfires in recent years due to rising summer temperatures and a historic drought.

As of early spring, wildfires have been surging through the taiga forest in Siberia. The region hardest hit was the Republic of Sakha in northeastern Russia. Also known as Yakutia, the area had 250 fires burning across 2,210 miles of land on July 5. By mid-July, residents of Yakutsk, the capitol of Sakha, were breathing in smoke from over 300 separate wildfires, as reported by the Siberian Times.

As of August 16, more than 40 million acres (17 million hectares) have burned, breaking a previous record—well before the fire season will end—set in 2012, according to Greenpeace Russia. One fire alone scorched an area as wide as 2.5 million acres, reports Ann M. Simmons for the Wall Street Journal. The fires are burning so intensely that vast swaths of smoke blocked sunlight. For the first time in recorded history, smoke from the fires in Siberia have drifted thousands of miles away to reach the North Pole, reports Oliver Carroll for the Independent.