A Russian court has sentenced a man who illegally cut rare species of trees to nearly four years behind bars, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said on Friday, praising the unusually harsh sentence.
A WWF spokesman said the man was caught red-handed in April 2009 when felling Korean cedar pine trees in a forest in Russia's far-eastern Maritime region. He was seized by forestry inspectors during a raid in which the WWF took part.
"We are talking about a rare case in which a man received a real rather than a suspended sentence and will serve it in a ... penal colony," the WWF spokesman said.
Poaching and the extermination of endangered species has become a major problem for Russia after the tightly controlled state inspection system eased after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The government is now working to reestablish the oversight structures.
The Korean cedar pine is native to Russia's Far East, northeast China, the Korean Peninsula and central Japan. Preserving cedar forests is of paramount concern to WWF Russia, as the tree is at the base of the food pyramid topped by the Amur tiger.
Last month, the cedars were included into a regional Red Book of endangered plants and animals.
MOSCOW, February 12 (RIA Novosti)
