Ecology Of Kola Peninsula

Sir, - While the Mad Max landscape conjured up by Patrick Smyth's report, "Acid rain and toxic fumes devastate arctic" (September…

Sir, - While the Mad Max landscape conjured up by Patrick Smyth's report, "Acid rain and toxic fumes devastate arctic" (September 27th), makes for great copy, it is only a partial telling of the story.

It is a tired cliche to say that Russia is a land of contrasts, yet it certainly true of the Kola Peninsula. Beyond the forest-death zones of Nikel, Zapolyarny and Monchegorsk remain the finest wilderness areas anywhere in Europe. Undammed rivers support extraordinary salmon stocks which simply no longer exist anywhere else on the continent. Extensive tracts of old-growth forests, the size and like of which have also vanished from the rest of Europe, can be found over the Finnish border. Wildlife populations on the Kola, particularly of bear, wolf, wolverine and birds of prey, are in far healthier conditions than the over-managed and over-exploited populations of neighbouring Scandinavia. The postage-stamp sized Pasvik park in Norway, mentioned in the article, is not large enough to sustain itself ecologically.

The devastation in the immediate surroundings of the smelters is indeed appalling. But remember that before the second World War Nikel was in Finnish territory and it was a British-French consortia that established the smelter in the 1930s. Even then, it was producing 100,000 tonnes of sulphur a year. Current levels are under half those reached in the mid-1980s when over 700,000 tonnes a year were added to the atmosphere.

Norway's offer of $45 million to clean up the smelters seems paltry when compared with the more than $2 million that country earns per hour from oil receipts. The many European purchasers of nickel and copper are equally culpable. So perhaps the unfortunate inhabitants of these towns might have been better served by a more thoughtful piece than one inspired by a whistle-stop tour of the "ex-Soviet Union Eco-Nightmare., Kola Section". -Yours, etc.,

READ MORE

Gneisvn 43, 9022 Tromso, Norway.