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Photo of a burning excavator, April 2011.
During the night of February 14th we, the silent shadows, sneaked into the tree cutters camp.
It was 3 o’clock in the night, but the workers were awake. They were going back-and-forth around the encampment, one quarry excavator was raping Nature while guards were watching TVs on their posts drinking beer. In our experience the camp was pretty large: 6-7 living sheds, several sheds for tools, 2 passenger cars, 3 excavators and 1 grader. Having sneaked between sheds and vehicles, we selected two excavators that looked as the most recent addition to local park (i.e., their loss will be most expensive). After that we followed routine procedure: put some rags around engine parts and oil pumps, soaked them with gasoline, etc. After we left the area, we tarried for some time to enjoy the night view. Both excavators were trailing huge columns of smoke into the air. We establish the damage done at around 6-8 million rubles (approx. 200 000 USD).
We hope this act will slow down operations in this quarry. The area already boasts several abandoned quarries. Since our initial recon in this district large tracts of wood were drained and cut in order to clear up space for more quarry works. The sand excavated in here is used for future development projects that do not take Nature or clean air into account.
We wish best of luck to all of you. Keep that fire burning.
MOSCOW 2014, ELF/FAI/IRF
