On January 11 we celebrate Nature Preserve and National Park Day – a beleaguered and traumatized holiday. Ecologists have a readymade diagnosis: wherever the latest preserve or national park is be established, you can be sure that the natural environment has already been ruined by man and now the only this left to do its set up a memorial, or a preserve, that is.
Nature preserves are popping up in Russia like mushrooms after the rain. As recently as the 1980s there were not that many – 41 nature preserves and 15 parks. Today, however, Russia has 103 preserves and 42 national parks. Moreover, a rank lower, there are more than 1200 nature parks and sanctuaries, and they can only survive by being granted protection through regional or federal status (becoming national parks or preserves). After all, these parks and preserves represent a sort of Noah’s ark of unique species of plants and animals, which are becoming fewer with each passing year. If earlier people mainly talked about protecting endangered species – the Amur Tiger, Far Eastern Leopard, Snow Leopard and White-Naped Crane – then today it is time to recognize that we are facing a general loss of biodiversity on the whole. If earlier there were more than 70 kinds of wolves in Russia, today there are no more than 14. The number of types of wheat has contracted from over 100 to less than 20 (only 9 of which are widespread).
And so people thought up nature preserves and national parks are a sort of Noah’s ark for flora and fauna to save both nature and themselves.
Russia’s first reserve – the Barguzin Nature Reserve – was created January 11, 1917. And it did not appear for good reasons. In those years, from 1903-1913, the sable population plummeted catastrophically and the situation was critical. Furs – a very important export, the Russian oil and gas of the 19th century – had become an exhausted resource. Russia was not only losing it sables but also an important source of income. So the state in 1913-1915 financed research expeditions to Siberia and the Kamchatka peninsula, where sable habitats were identified and special reserves were surveyed. That’s how the Barguzin Nature Reserve appeared in the shores of Lake Baikal. Only 25 years later sables populated the entire Barguzin Range and its range in Siberia was fully restored. That’s how Russia’s system of nature reserves began. Today the country’s reserves and national parks occupy more than 42.5 million hectares, more about the size of the territory of Spain and France together.
However, there is little to take pride in here. If salmon and cedars, Siberian cranes and polar bears, roe and lotus and even ordinary plants like St.-John’s wort and ginseng can only be found in special nature reserves, then how far has the ‘king of the beasts’ fallen? The depths are fathomless, and they are often only revealed in secondary and tertiary situations. Often in news about helicopter crashes, snowmobile accidents or hunting trip involving the death famous actors or local officials or prominent businessmen. The country mourns their loss but one black mark passes almost unnoticed: they died as participants of VIP hunting excursions into, for example, the nature reserves of Altai, the Volga delta, Sheregesh or the Shantar Islands. These are just elite poachers. So if the former Minister of Defense Serdyukov allowed dachas to be built in nature reserves – on the island of Utrish (on the Black Sea) and in the Volga delta (Astrakhan Nature Reserve) – then other officials, albeit a rank lower, will try not to fall behind this example.
Often when conversation turns to the protection of nature, they volunteer to lead nature reserves and national parks or sponsor their creation. And then later, they carve out special parcels in these parks to build villas and estates, which has been the case in practically all of the country’s 103 nature reserves.
Whether these Noah’s arks will survive and why their purpose is remain open questions, but their numbers continue to increase just as biodiversity on the planet Earth steadily decreases. At the same time we can be glad that three national parks were created in 2013 – Beringia (Bering Land Bridge), Onezhskoye Pomorye and Shantar Islands. The Ingermanland National Park (consisting of islands in the Gulf of Finland) is presently being formed.
Beringia on the Chukotka peninsula was created to help aid the survival of the polar bear, snow sheep and Pacific walrus. Onezhskoye Pomorye was intended to preserve the ecosystem of the Onega peninsula. The Shantar Islands are home to otters, sable, brown bears, weasels and foxes.
The situation with the Ingermanland in the Leningrad region is a bit more complicated. Ecologists are trying to prove to the government that the islands lie along the bird migration bath from the White Sea and Baltic Sea to Africa and Western Europe. In other words, they need to convince the state that industrial facilities should not be built here, which is almost impossible to do.
A convincing confirmation and diagnosis of the state of affairs with nature reserves in Russia can be seen in the conflict over the boundaries of the future Khibiny National Park in the Murmansk region. The park for ten years has not been able to get started due to the plans of Northwestern Phosphorus Company. The company wants to build and industrial road that would divide the territory of the proposed protected area in half. And although the even the Ministry of Natural Resources noted that industrial objects would not be allowed on the territory of the future national park, the conquerors of nature are indefatigable: “There will be a road.”
And I personally do not doubt this. After all, development, like civilization, cannot be stopped. The question only lies in proportions and sense of good measure. The steady growth in the number of national parks in Russia bears witness to our careless handling of the planet’s natural world and points to an increasing appetite on the part of the king of the beasts, an appetite which increasingly finds its roots in greed.
Vladimir Emelyanenko
