The communities of the Yelizovo District, Kamchatka Territory requested the assistance of Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation in solving an important issue  - ensuring a traditional life style and nature management of indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East, RF.

The authors of the appeal believe that in Kamchatka the situation is very tense due to the planned tender for a contract for granting fishing grounds to ensure fishing to maintain the traditional lifestyle and traditional nature management of the indigenous peoples of the North and for making such a contract.

The communities believe that the Government of the Kamchatka Territory has been infringing on the priority rights to wildlife utilization, which is guaranteed by the RF Constitution, Federal Law and generally-recognized principles and standards of the international law and international agreements of the Russian Federation, which are manifested as follows.

When allocating the fishing grounds, the Government of the Kamchatka Territory violated the main principles established by Article 2 of the Federal Law «On Fishing and Protection of Aquatic Biological Resolurces» of 20.12.2004 № 166-FL, which among the main principles regards the consideration of the interests of indigenous peoples living in coastal areas whereby these peoples shall be provided with access to aquatic biological resources to ensure their life activity. Article 18 of the same law established that the boundaries of the fishing grounds are determined according to the procedure established by an executive authorized by a federal body.       The above procedure has been approved by the RF State Fisheries Committee (Instruction 47 of January 31, 2008). In conformity with Paragraph 5 of the Instruction, the identification of the boundaries of fishing grounds is accomplished by executive authorities of the RF subject, considering the proposal of municipalities and NGOs.

The set of fishing grounds essentially does not conform to Paragraph 7, whereby  «… the width and length of he grounds shall be no less than 1 000 meters». Actually, the list and section «Size of the Ground» contains 300 m x 200 m grounds.

The above enactments have been ignored by the Kamchatka Territory authorities when developing a set of fishery grounds. Proposals for identification of the boundaries of the fishing grounds of municipalities, AIPON of the Kamchatka Territory and the communities have been repeatedly submitted to the Kamchatka Territory Government since November  2007 and throughout the entire 2008.

All those proposals were ignored.

The state authorities select the fishing grounds for indigenous people on their own. Some of the grounds used for traditional subsistence fishery by indigenous peoples for decades were defined by the authorities for industrial and sporting fishery. The remaining non-productive and economically unprofitable grounds are situated on a boggy terrain, on sand, or are 200 – 300 m wide.

In their appeal, the Communities request the President to oblige the Kamchatka Territory Government to introduce amendments to the Set of Fishing Grounds in terms of inclusion of grounds intended for the traditional lifestyle and traditional nature management, considering the proposals of municipalities and indigenous NGOs.

A contract for granting fishing grounds to ensure a traditional indigenous lifestyle and traditional subsistence should be put out to a tender and upon amendments to the Set of Fishing Grounds the making of such a contract should be specified.

On the instruction of the communities, the Appeal was signed by N.A. Piskovaya, President of Yelizovo Association of Indigenous Peoples ;, D.S. Monina, President of the Union of Indigenous Communities «Suuachu-ai» ., L.G. Ignatenko, President of the Union of Indigenous Communities «Yayar»

The Information Center  «Lach», the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky