Stumps in the buffer zone

BESH-TASH VALLEY — On the slope above the track in the lower Besh-Tash valley, the stumps are easy to find. Some are spruce, cut clean with a chainsaw. A few are juniper, the slow-growing arsha whose felling, when alive, is banned throughout the valley. The sawdust on several of them is still pale.

The stumps lie near the boundary of the Besh-Tash Timber Concession, a forestry lease in the buffer zone of the Besh-Tash Ecological Conservation Area, about 20 kilometers south of Talas. The concession permits limited thinning and sanitary felling of Tian Shan spruce and the collection of dead juniper, mainly for local building timber, fence posts and fuel. The ISEZ forestry service sets annual quotas and requires the replanting of spruce.

Conservation groups say cutting along the edge of the concession has increased. "Some of this is a family taking firewood for the winter. Some of it is not," said a member of a Talas conservation group who has walked the valley for years. "Nobody takes a living juniper by accident."

The forestry service said the concession's quotas and replanting had been checked and found in order, that the cutting reported lay outside the lease, and that rangers had increased patrols. The upper valley, beyond the Qara-Chik line, is outside the concession and is watched by clan wardens.