Grigovia establishes preserve

In efforts aimed to negate growing pressure from a half dozen American-owned consortia to open their pristine high valleys to nub-logging for hardwoods and strip-mining for precious-earth-metals, the government of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) – authorized by a majority of its citizens, 99% of whom voted in the referendum – protected large swaths of its pristine countryside from runaway economic development. Named for Queen Pylta Pyltandyennd, who ruled the country for over a half century, from 1842 to 1897, the Pylta The Terrible National Ecological Protection Area (PTTNEPA) encompasses nearly half of the country's entire landmass, an area roughly the size of America's state of Connecticut.

Dubbed 'The Terrible' by a proto-Russian czar who had tried and failed nearly a dozen times to add her relatively small realm to his, Queen Pylta is celebrated within GROG as an early adopter of electricity (she was close friends with Nikola Tesla), as the inventor of the sweet-yet-spicy fermented green-tuber borscht, and as a gentle matriarch who sacrificed greatly for her subjects. She is remembered on the first Thursday in April, on Pyltafessd, a national holiday during which the people of Grig and the inhabitants of even the smallest village recharge their flashlight batteries and clean out their cupboards, at dusk going from house to house to share with each other the last of their winter stores, singing local folk-songs and lighting the way with their dazzlingly-bright pocket torches.

“We Grigovians are not against mining, or logging,” said Ristlünnd Yindlong, spokesman for the Resources Extraction Council, a voluntary national organization that researches and develops techniques for minimally-invasive resource extraction. “Miners and lumberjacks make up about 5% of the workforce and contribute roughly 10% to our overall gross domestic product. We, however, are against practices that are done hastily and without regard for biodiversity; that do not consider the needs of this nation's citizens and wildlife; and that violate the many rights of Nature, as defined by our Constitution. Personally, I signed the referendum in part to protect our high valleys, the only place in the world known to harbor drop-and-crawl moss, or autokineticus grigovianus. I invite you to stop by my flat this April, and pick up a jar of spiced apple butter.” In addition to establishing PTTNEPA, the national referendum also placed a ten year moratorium on new taxation and made it a crime to get all up in someone else's personal business.

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