Dr. Suren Gazaryan / Environmental Watch

Suren Gazaryan. Photo by: Goldman Environmental Prize.

In a country increasingly known for its authoritarian-style crackdown on activists and dissidents, a bat scientist has won a number of impressive victories to protect the dwindling forests of the Western Caucasus. Beginning in the 1990s, Russian chiropterologist Suren Gazaryan led a number of campaigns to fight illegal development, including mansions for then-president Dmitry Medvedev; regional Governor ofKrasnodar, Alexander Tkachev; and even a project allegedly intended for president Vladimir Putin.

For his efforts, Gazaryan was awarded today with the Goldman Environmental Prize (see interview below), often called the Nobel Prize for the environment, along with five other winners around the world.

Working with the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC), Gazaryan employed non-violent action and social media to take on the construction of pleasure palaces for the political elite on protected land as well as protest development projects intended for the Sochi Winter Olympics.

“The very people responsible for creating these laws were the first to violate them,” Gazaryan said in a video (below).

After a protracted campaign, including blocking bulldozers intended to build a palace for Medvedev, Gazaryan and other environmentalists succeeded in creating the Utrish Nature Preserve, which today preserves over 10,000 hectares along the coast of the Black Sea.

However, these environmental victories eventually forcedGazaryan into exile. In 2012 he was sentenced to three-years probation for taking part in a public rally against a land grab for a mansion for regional governor, Tkachev. Just months later, Russian officials charged Gazaryan with making death threats against security guards while the scientist protested outside a lavish mansion linked to Vladimir Putin.

Gazaryan sayshe never made threats against security guards, but rather than spend years in jail,he sought asylum in Estonia.

“Looking forward my main goal is to continue to try to change people’s consciousness so that they better understand that nature isn’t something we can just sell off and get rich on,”Gazaryan said in a video. “We have to preserve these places for future generations.”

Mongabay.com recently conducted a short interview with the Goldman Environment Prize winner, an honor that includes an award of $175,000.

INTERVIEW WITH SUREN GAZARYAN

Mongabay:What attracted you to bats in the first place?

Suren Gazaryan: I was a spelunker, exploring and studying caves-I was a hydrobiologist at first-and realized the bats in the Russian Caucasus were poorly understood (not studied). I went to graduate school and studied bats as the topic of my doctoral dissertation.

Mongabay:At what point in your research did you know that you needed to go beyond science and into activism?

Suren Gazaryan: In the late 1990’s I was exploring a cave in the Western Caucasus mountains and discovered a previously unknown colony of rare bats and the cave was under threat because the local authorities wanted to turn it into a tourist site (a “show cave”-for profit).

Suren Gazaryan. Photo by: Goldman Environmental Prize.Suren Gazaryan: I didn’t think about this. I was responding to the circumstances around me.

Suren Gazaryan: We used social media as an alternative to mainstream media.

Suren Gazaryan: I don’t know.

Suren Gazaryan: Humanity needs to resolve its worst global problems.

Suren Gazaryan. Photo by: Goldman Environmental Prize.

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013, Suren Gazaryan, an exiled activist of the Environment …

SUREN GAZARYAN, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST:

Gazaryan had been mobilizinghis fellow activists to call attention to whathe said was the property of Gov.

Gazaryan said it didn’t matter that it was not him buthisfriends who had spray-painted the words.

“They had to punish us,” Gazaryan said.

“There were those three bulky guys with truncheons,” saidGazaryan, “and now they were saying I was threatening him.”

Gazaryan feared thathis suspended sentence would be converted into real prison time, and fled.He was granted political asylum in Estonia this year.

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013, Suren Gazaryan, an exiled activist of the Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus, talks to the Associated Press in Tbilisi, Georgia. Dozens of Sochi activists, journalists and environmentalists have been harassed and intimidated in the run up to the Winter Games in Sochi. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

File – Gazaryan, who fled after being prosecuted forhisactivism, points out a mudslide from an illegal dump near Sochi in April 2011.

Zoologist Suren Gazaryan, a member of a regional green group, Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, said much of the planting program had been “pointless.”

The planting could never substitute for the loss of established forest, which is a complex ecosystem, Gazaryan said.

“If they planted a forest in an open field of a thousand hectares, then yes, it could theoretically be adequate,”hesaid.

“But in any case, these are ecosystems, not a Lego set that you take apart and then rebuild somewhere else,”he added.

Meanwhile activists Gazaryan and Vitishko have both been made to feel the force of the law after being convicted for property damage following a protest over a residence allegedly belonging to the local governor.

Gazaryan, who spoke to AFP from Tallinn, has since claimed asylum in Estonia.

• Suren Gazaryan

Suren Gazaryan, a zoologist and member of theEnvironmental Watch of the North Caucasus (EWNC) group, was exiled from Russia and handed criminal charges for his campaigning work. He told TIME magazine in January, “The most dangerous and important part of the damage is the biodiversity lost in the area.

The Committee of Concerned Scientists wrote on behalf of Russian zoologist and environmental activist Suren Gazaryan and geologist Evgeny Vitishenko in May 2012 to protest criminal charges designed to retaliate for environmental inspections.

Those charges resulted in a three-year suspended sentence for Dr. Gazaryan. In August 2012, Dr. Gazaryan was charged with attempted murder of a security   continue reading >>

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