By Guy Faulconbridge
The Evenki have enlisted the help of WWF, Greenpeace and a host of local environmental groups to ask President Vladimir Putin and his protege Dmitry Medvedev, who is running in the March 2 presidential election, to scrap the idea.
Pavel Sulyandziga, first vice president of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Russia's North, Siberia and Far East, said the groups opposing the dam have approached all the candidates in the presidential race.
Russia's state hydro-electric power company, RosHydro, said it is looking at plans to build an 8,000 megawatt station at Turukhansk on the Lower Tunguska River in northern Siberia that would flood some of the Evenki pasture land and villages.
But Anatoly Chubais, the chief of Russia's power monopoly, has said the revived project will change the face of the region, bringing railways, roads and factories to the desolate spot.
"We are working out the project at the moment and looking at the ecological impact," she said. "If it is approved then it will have to go through all the proper environmental studies."
"The Soviet Union used to call on us to build a 'bright future' without paying any attention to the differences in culture and traditions of indigenous peoples and so destroyed a whole way of life," local Evenki said in a petition.
(Editing by Michael Winfrey)
