the cause of socialism, but to grasp the coattails of their fathers’ glory in
the Great Patriotic War (World War II). Though he already held the rank
of lieutenant, Trush was refused because of his age. Instead, he spent
fifteen more years in the mines where he earned a reputation for diligence
and integrity that caught the attention of his bosses. In spite of his
eligibility, Trush never joined the Communist Party; he had no illusions
about the corruption rampant within it.
In 1994, while working as a foreman at a coal mine in Primorye, Trush
was approached by an acquaintance who worked in environmental
protection. A new agency was being formed, and he thought that Trush,
with his athleticism, pugnacity, and interest in hunting, might be a good
candidate. Trush was intrigued and, in March of that year, he found
himself in Vladivostok, standing before a short, barrel-chested man with
a predilection for pipes and military finery; the man’s name was
Vladimir Ivanovich Schetinin, and he was the deputy chairman of
Primorye’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. Schetinin was in the
process of creating something unprecedented in the history of Russian
wildlife conservation.
Tiger poaching is the most visible symptom of an environmental problem
the size of the continental United States: Siberia’s forests represent an
arboreal subcontinent covering 2.3 million square miles; altogether, they
account for a quarter of the world’s total wood inventory and more than
half of its coniferous forests. They are also one of the planet’s biggest
carbon sinks, helping to mitigate one of the chief causes of climate
change. While tigers were being stolen from the forests, the forests were
also being stolen from the tigers, and from the country. The combination
of a desperate need for hard currency, lax forestry regulations, and vast
markets that lay only a border crossing away set loose a monster in the
woods, which is wreaking havoc to this day. In the Far East, legal and
black market logging (along with every shade in between) continues to