Russian governor promises $17,000 for furless chipmunk

An award of 500,000 rubles ($17,000) has been promised to the person, who brings a bald chipmunk to the head of Russia's Altai Republic.

Alexander Berdnikov, the head of the Altai Republic, made such a weird promise as he was commenting the information saying that the continual landing of rockets on the territory of his region contaminates the soil and causes serious damage to the ecology, Ded Altai news agency said.

"If someone brings me a bald chipmunk with traces of heptyl poisoning, I'll give that person an award of 500,000 rubles," Berdnikov said.

Local news agencies said before that many animal species, included those on the Red List, began to die soon after the crash of the Progress rocket in August.

Local residents said that they could see poisoned fish floating on the rivers, whereas hunters found many dead furless chipmunks in the woods. The chipmunks had lost much of their fur because of the heptyl poisoning, the Ecology of the North said.

The debris of Progress M-12M spaceship crashed on the territory of the Altai region on August 24. The spaceship was supposed to deliver nearly 800 kilos of highly toxic heptyl to the International Space Station. The Federal Service on Surveillance for Consumer Rights was monitoring the environment on a daily basis before the middle of September and found no traces of the toxic substance.