Russian scouts hunt fir poachers

Poachers lop the top few feet off the fir trees

As Russia gears up for the New Year holiday, the main winter festival in the secular calendar, police in one city have turned to a troop of boy scouts to combat the seasonal crime of fir-tree poaching.

A reporter for Russian Public TV accompanied one team on its evening patrol in the forests around the central city of Saratov.

The youngsters keep in touch with base by walkie-talkie

For eight years now, dozens of 8-14-year-olds from the Roza Vetrov troop have gone down to the woods in the week before New Year to catch thieves who are prepared to risk a fine of 10 times the price of a legally-bought tree.

The youngsters do not take any risks themselves, troop leader Natalya Mikhaylova explained; their job is just to distract the poachers until the police arrive.

"Once we even pretended we were looking for a tree ourselves, as if that's what we were there for, so that we didn't frighten them," she told the reporter.

Modus Operandi

The scouts have clearly-defined operating methods.

They go out between 8pm and midnight, the main poaching hours, in groups of three: one to lead the way, the second armed with a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with their base, the third to guard the rear.

One of the boys talked about how he overcame his initial fears.

"The very first time we came it was scary - you could hear rustling or sounds like someone breaking something or walking about," Dima Ulyanov said.

The very first time we came it was scary - you could hear rustling or sounds like someone breaking something or walking about

Scout Dima Ulyanov

"But then you get used to it."

The local police appreciate the efforts of their young helpers.

"They have to be protected themselves, because you get all sorts of people," Sergeant Sergey Timayev admitted.

"But, generally, yes, they're great. Let them give people a bit of a scare."

'A fir cop'

To the reporter's chagrin, his evening out with the scouts was too quiet.

"This evening the poachers evidently preferred their warm flats to a walk in the cold - the scouts didn't see a single offender," he regretted.

It is still the police officers' job to arrest the poachers

But he struck a more enthusiastic note later, with news that dozens more children were waiting to join the Saratov scouts' "special tree protection brigade".

"After all, the nearer it gets to New Year, the more poachers there are in the woods," he concluded, hopefully.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.