(1) The Maritime Province, or Primorsky Region as it is called in Russia

In the olden days, Vladivostok's port of entry was the seaport directly connected right off the ocean dock to the Far Eastern terminal (picture to the right) of the Siberian Railroads. But, nowadays, a number of Russian and Japanese airlines connect Vladivostok with Niigata and Fukui, and, since the airport is located north of the port city, it takes about an hour's limousine ride from where you arrive to get into downtown Vladivostok.

As the mode of international transportation has gone through a radical change such as this, traveling within the Primorsky Region has also become considerably freer and easier in recent years both in terms of accessibility, speed and the method of transportation used. I will show you an example using the routing we took to go to the Agzu village.

(2) Terney is the northernmost district of the Primorsky Region

Of the 24 administrative districts comprising Primorsky Region, Terneisky District is the northernmost of all with its northern tip looking like a mushroom (see the maps) obtruding into Khabarovsk Region above neatly overlapping with the Samarga river basin.
The quickest way one can travel from Vladivostok to Agzu Village is to fly a small single engine jet to Plastun , an hour-and-a-half flight and about half way toward the destination, and then drive one hour to Terney City to take a helicopter to Agzu spending another hour and a half. Just to make it sure you have a good idea about the size and substance of the Primorsky Region in comparison with Japan, we provide below a thumbnail sketch of the Samarga River's resource potential using what we know about the Ishikari River of Hokkaido, Japan, which used to be a famous salmon river and comparable in many ways to Samarga and suggests a lot in terms of salmon resource management.

(3) How big and productive is the Samarga River?

The size of the drainage basin of Samarga River is from 1 to 1.5 times that of the Ishikari River with a comparable water flow. And, let me just say that during the 16-year period from 1868 through 1883, there were, according to written records , over 1 million salmon caught in every season, mostly chums, in 8 of the 16 years, with the notable peak in 1879 of over 1.9 million recorded catch. Furthermore, these are considered to be disguisingly understated figures given the fact that relentless taxes were imposed on salmon catch for the revenue-short government during these early decades of the Meiji era. These were the years when the intensifying commercial fishing was not yet bringing about devastating impact on Ishikari's wild salmon stocks.

It is not to say that Samarga River should still be as rich today in salmon resource as Ishikari River was more than a century ago. The sustained Russian and Japanese open-sea commercial fishing efforts have progressively taken tolls of the wild salmon stocks all along the shores of Japan Sea including those of Primorsky Region.

This notwithstanding, the fact remains that Samarga River still runs deep and pure through the pristine forests with absolutely no water quality problems or habitat deterioration . This means that the river system still remains as productive as it has ever been, and there is a much greater possibility of rehabilitating its wild salmon stocks if sustained cares are taken to do so by a restrained and eco-conscious resource utilization program.

(4) The Udege people of the Russian Far East

The Udege people are a definitive Tungusic ethnic group of ancient historical fame inhabiting in the Russian Far East, though greatly reduced in number in recent years and found mostly in the basins of the upper Amur tributaries with some also residing in the Primorsky Region. The up-river village of Agzu in the Samarga basin is one such Udege community rich in ethno-cultural diversity as a result of the influx of Russian settlers over time.

(5) The past and present of the local peoples and their communities

Traditionally, the Udeges had been a hunting and fishing people of the Taiga forests who, in the case of those of the Agzu village, hunted the thickly wooded valleys of the Samarga basin and fished year round off the main river.
However, during the Stalinist era, a collectivized life-style and strict quotas, or "norma" as they were called in Soviet Russia, were imposed on them for raw pelt production in return for a guaranteed cash income plus goods and services.
However, it must be noted that the socialist reforms such as they were nevertheless represented a form of modernization, bringing them into structured community life with such symbolic modern amenities as TVs and refrigerators supplied by government, all of which were hooked to a public power house fueled by diesel fuel also shipped in by government.
But, from after the Perestroika reforms, the successive waves of decentralization and privatization of economic activities battered down these subsidies long enjoyed by the Udege people one after another during the 1990s. As the government subsidies trickled down to a mere pittance, the markets for pelts and furs also collapsed, leaving the local communities like Agzu high and dry with neither the market for their products, nor any substitute forms of income. Besides, given the present collective life-style, it is obviously impossible for the people of Agzu to go back to the traditional way of life of hunters and fishers.

(6) The challenge of the post-Cold War global market economy and the Udege people's response

The Udege people of the Agzu village sent their representative to Japan, in the spring of 1999 in response to the invitation offered by the Friends of the Earth-Japan, to explore, among other things, the possibility of exporting some of the local products to the Japanese market. And then, during the summer, the hunters and fishers of Agzu decided to organize themselves into a new cross-regional association called the "Agzu Association of Indigenous People ." In the meantime, the FoE-Japan decided to send a special FS mission to Agzu during September 1999 with an aim to further exploring the feasibility of local fishery and medicinal herb processing businesses with export market in mind.

As a result, the Japanese mission organized jointly by the FoE-Japan and the Virtual Foundation Japan visited Agzu form September 20 through 28, 1999, participating in village meetings, taking surveys to check out the local electric power need as well as other local resource-based new business feasibilities.
Prominent on the list of "possibly feasible" local businesses are (1) the use of salmon resource for local processing of products for export, (2) the utilization of a powerful arctic variety of Korean Ginseng called "Ezo-Ukogi" in Japanese and "Eleuthelococcus" in Russian for the production of herbal medicine for both domestic and foreign markets, and (3) the development and promotion of guided "eco-tours" as outdoor camping, fishing and hunting tours for foreign and domestic tourism market.

The Japanese citizens' mission returned home on September 30, and its members are now engaged in the work of (1) establishing a better, more reliable, and open communication system between Japan and the remote areas of Primorsky Region, and (2) further examining the projects' feasibility on the Japanese side.