About Russia's Protected Area

Russia has one the world's premiere systems of protected areas, consisting of 100 zapovedniks (strict nature reserves) and 35 national parks.  Few people in Russia or abroad know of the system or its important part in sustaining the global ecological balance.  Large tracts of virgin forests play a role in global ecology comparable to rain forests.  Intact areas of wilderness allow large-scale animal migrations, and three of the world’s nine major migratory bird routes extend across Russia.  Scientific data long collected in the zapovednik system could shed light on global climate change and ecological trends.  

Russia's first strict nature reserve – Barguzinsky Zapovednik – was founded in 1916 on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal to protect the endangered Barguzin sable.  By the 1940s, the system had grown to 31 million acres.  But in 1951 Stalin cut the reserves down to fewer than four million acres, opening up protected areas for exploitation.  Scientists fought to restore the system and today Russia’s 100 zapovedniks cover 83 million acres or 1.4 percent of the country.  Zapovedniks harbor natural wonders from the geysers and volcanoes of Kamchatka to the mountains ringing Lake Baikal to the last fragments of European steppe.  Reserves were created to save critical habitat for endangered species such as the Siberian tiger, saiga antelope, Russian desman, and black stork.

Today Russia is struggling to uphold its commitment to conservation in the face of economic woes.  Between 1991 and 1995, government funding for the system fell 90 percent.  Protected areas struggled to keep their experienced staff and safeguard their territories from poachers and economic exploitation.  Large-scale development projects backed by western companies call for construction of oil pipelines and chemical processing of gold reserves in close proximity to zapovedniks.  Damming of rivers, commercial logging, and extraction of fuels and metals also threaten the integrity of protected lands.

Economic pressures on protected areas accelerated in 2000 when Russian President Putin abolished the State Committee for Environmental Protection, which managed the zapovednik system, and transferred its functions to the Ministry of Natural Resources along with the national parks system.  Environmental impact assessments and protected areas planning is now in the hands of those most interested in developing Russia’s natural resources.

A number of NGOs and conservation activists are monitoring the situation in the Ministry to ensure the protected status of zapovedniks and national parks remains infallible.  Certain important figures have played vital roles in supporting the system and defending the nature it was designed to protect.  Read more about these individuals in the Defenders of Nature section of this website. 

If ensuring protection of zapovedniks is not a government priority, then the public must be enlisted to help safeguard Russia’s natural heritage.  Through photography and writing, we hope to increase public awareness about and support for the protected areas system in Russia and abroad.