Preserving The ShirakamiMountains
The Shirakami Mountains is a huge mountainous area?130,000 hectare? on the prefectural border between Aomori and Akita Prefectures, with summits lying between 1000?1200 meters. The core of the mountain area, about 17,000 hectare, comprising the last remaining stand of virgin Siebold’ s beech forests, is inscribed on the World Heritage List. The 17th World Heritage Committee, held in Columbia in December 1993, registered the Shirakami Mountains as a World Natural Heritage. The Shirakami Mountains Preservation Society was established in the same year with a hope of helping preserve the natural beauty of the Shirakami forests. Please note
that there has been some struggles between developers and conservationists
in this area before it was designated as a World Heritage. There was fierce
opposition to the construction of a forest We need to confront this man-made destruction, if we want to preserve our natural beauty and global environment. Preservation of the Shirakami Mountains must begin with preservation of their forests. In fact, we have witnessed a sudden decline of black woodpeckers when huge beech forests were cut down in some areas of the Tohoku region. It is now reported the population of these black woodpeckers in the northern Tohoku region has dropped to 50. The
Shirakami Mountains Preservation Society founded “ The Fund for Saving
Black Woodpeckers and Restoring Beech Forests” in 2000. With the
cooperation of the Aomori Prefectural Office, We want many people to realize that as you walk in the midst of a beech forest, you are engulfed with a refreshing fragrance of beech trees, which you can breathe in through your skin, nose and mouth. It is total refreshment! You feel like you and the natural forest become one! You have discovered your ancient Jomon roots through basking in the forests! We would like to keep this preservation movement at least for another ten years and help restore this natural beauty of Shirakami Mountains.
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road.
Local residents living along the Akashi River collected a petition of 1,024
people within the space of only a month, asking the Governor of Aomori
Prefecture to stop the construction of the road. Consequently the
construction aborted, but not without some damage to the virgin beech
forest. Those residents who opposed the forest road still remember the flood
of 1945 when their entire village was
wiped away by torrential water. They knew what the construction of a road in
the mist of a forest would do: Some years back, when another forest road was
constructed further upstream, their mountains was dilapidated, rivers dried
up, and animals and plants adversely affected.
Ajigasawa Town Office, Tsugaru Forest Management Station, and local
fishermen’ s unions, we initiated a beech forest restoration campaign:
picking up beech seed in the forests, produce and plant seedlings in the
Shirakami Mountains. In June 2002, our society was the sponsor of “
Shirakami Mountains Beech Tree Planting Festival in Akashi,” held near the
core area of the registered World Heritage site. The purpose of this
tree-planting festival was to provide green tourism for Shirakmi visitors
and help them experience the natural beauty of the Shirakami Mountains along
the Akashi River. We were happy to receive very positive responses from the
participants of the program.
