Kamchatka, Russia | Where the Salmon Rule, National Geographic Magazine: Russian Warden Lifts Weights from MI-8
In Kamchatka, much of the anti-poaching warden’s equipment is provided by WWF and other NGOs to keep the Kurilskoe Lake World Heritage Site poacher free, but they do not get money for free weights. So the wardens have strapped together MI-8 and tank parts to use as weight-training equipment. The “weight bench” is a couple of discarded 50-gallon drums for aviation fuel. This group of wardens was brought in from the Sochi area of Russia (Caucus Mountains) so that they would have no local contacts or ties to poaching brigades and would clean up the area. Two or three of the wardens are always out on enforcement, packing out for over a month at a time. The official salary for wardens is $200 a month, but the WWF came in and supplemented salaries and bought them the equipment they need to do the job.
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