Public appeal to the Accounts Chamber of Russia on protecting the national protected areas system

I am publicly addressing the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, Boris Yuryevich Kovalchuk, on my own behalf and on behalf of a large part of our country’s civil society.

Dear Boris Yuryevich,

You head Russia’s supreme state audit body. The Accounts Chamber has already carried out major audits in the field of natural resources and identified systemic violations. An audit of the state forest inventory alone showed that, as of the beginning of 2024, up-to-date information was available for only 17% of Russia’s forest fund lands. As a result of the Accounts Chamber’s work in 2025, more than 4,600 violations were identified, 77 criminal cases were opened, and the economic effect of the agency’s work amounted to 653 billion rubles.

I believe that our country’s protected areas system is facing a serious threat. This position is shared by the scientific and academic community, as well as by civil society. The scale is enormous: federal specially protected natural areas cover around 75 million hectares. These include nature reserves, national parks, wildlife refuges, forests, land, water, and other natural resources that the state has preserved for the entire country for decades.

In recent years, legislative initiatives have repeatedly appeared that would allow the boundaries of specially protected natural areas to be changed and expand the possibilities for economic activity within them. In its official opinion on the current draft law No. 1096223-8, the Civic Chamber listed six other similar initiatives introduced earlier. Most of them were rejected or withdrawn following criticism from experts, scientists, and the public. The current draft law was introduced by the Government of Russia, and on March 18, 2026, the State Duma adopted it in the first reading. It creates a legal mechanism for changing the boundaries of specially protected natural areas and for placing certain facilities of state significance within such territories.

The problem has already gone far beyond individual nature reserves and national parks. Rules governing other natural territories are changing at the same time. In 2025, two attempts were made to expand opportunities for the construction of tourism and ski infrastructure in protective mountain forests. These proposals involved logging, land clearing, and construction in forests that stabilize soil on mountain slopes, regulate water runoff, protect river headwaters, and affect landslide and avalanche processes. Representatives of major businesses publicly estimated the economic interests associated with such development at hundreds of billions of rubles. As of August 2026, the adoption of this initiative had not been confirmed.

Since March 1, 2026, a new legal mechanism has been in effect for the Baikal Natural Territory: under certain conditions established by law, special exceptions to the general prohibition are permitted, including the conversion of forest lands and the placement of infrastructure. In Moscow, in December 2024, the status of 146 out of 148 regional specially protected natural areas was changed at the same time. National parks already allow agreements on recreational activities to be concluded for periods of up to 49 years, while subsequent amendments to legislation regulated the construction of temporary roads for such infrastructure. A major ski resort project on the Lago-Naki Plateau near the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Western Caucasus” continues to move forward despite opposition from Russian scientists.

There are also cases where protected territories have already been altered for resource development. The area of the Yamal Wildlife Refuge was reduced by approximately 325,000 hectares in the context of gas field development, while sections of Numto Nature Park were withdrawn for oil exploration and production. Since September 2026, a permit-based procedure has been in effect for the removal of plants and fungi listed in the Red Data Book, including in certain cases involving construction projects. When all these decisions are considered together, the scale of what is happening becomes clear: specially protected natural areas, protective forests, Lake Baikal, habitats of rare species, recreational development, mineral extraction, and infrastructure construction are all being affected at the same time. This is why the situation must now be assessed at the federal level as a single process, including its property, budgetary, and economic consequences.

I believe you will fully agree that when such decisions appear again and again, the state must establish their financial and property consequences. Changes to the boundaries of protected territories may involve land, forests, mineral resources, tourism projects, roads, infrastructure, licenses, and other economic interests. We are dealing with state property and natural resources of enormous value.

I ask you to initiate a federal audit of Russia’s protected areas system. It is necessary to examine the history of changes to the boundaries and protection regimes of specially protected natural areas over at least the past twenty years and determine what happened to these territories after such decisions were made: who received land and forest plots, what licenses were issued, what investment projects appeared, who obtained rights to conduct economic activities, what facilities were built at state expense, and who ultimately received the economic benefit.

It is also necessary to determine the cost of such decisions to the state: budget expenditures, publicly funded infrastructure, damage to natural resources, and possible future costs of restoring these territories.

The Accounts Chamber has the powers and tools needed to examine state property, budget funds, natural resources, and the economic outcomes of such decisions within a single audit. If the audit reveals signs of violations or criminal offenses, the materials may be transferred to the competent state authorities.

Boris Yuryevich, I ask you to consider conducting such a federal audit and to make its results as open and accessible to the public as possible.

We have launched an independent Public Initiative to protect Russia’s protected areas system. It is accompanied by a document describing the current problems, attempts to weaken the protection status of specially protected natural areas, and our position.

File Download the document (PDF) 242 KB

The citizens of Russia have the right to know what is happening to territories that the state has recognized as being of special value and placed under special protection, why their boundaries and protection regimes are being changed, what economic interests are connected with these decisions, and who benefits from them.

Respectfully, researcher Pavel Pashkov.