Kyrgyzstan’s authorities are seeking to introduce a moratorium on the dismantling of the country’s protected area system.

I previously wrote in my articles about how governments have rushed to destroy the last nature reserves, justifying it as an “urgent economic necessity.” For those who missed it, let me remind you that, for example, here in Russia alone the authorities have passed a bill allowing clear-cut logging of ancient forests around Lake Baikal, are pushing forward legislation to open any specially protected natural areas to business development, and are also actively advancing a proposal for large-scale logging in protective forests within the country's mountain ecosystems. To make this possible, they recently legalized the transplantation of endangered plant and fungal species in order to seize their habitats (again, if businesses require the habitat of rare species), as well as a proposal expanding opportunities to kill animals listed in the Red Book.

Sounds insane, doesn't it? Any reasonable person would say that it's absurd even to talk about such things. After all, ever since school we've known that nature reserves are sanctuaries for wildlife, while the Red Book is an untouchable list of species that must be protected at all costs.

Unfortunately, all of this is completely real. Together, we spent a long time fighting back against these outrageous initiatives, successfully managing several times to have them withdrawn from consideration. But in the spring of 2026, tremendous pressure was placed on all environmental defenders. At this point, it is unclear how society can continue to respond.

Meanwhile, exactly the same thing is happening in the United States, and I have written a whole series of articles about it. Things have gone completely off the rails there as well: millions of acres of protected forests are being handed over to business interests, while wildlife is being exterminated on a massive scale. Environmental defenders from the U.S. write to me saying they simply cannot believe what they are seeing and hearing: the authorities have actually allowed, for example, oil and gas companies to "accidentally" kill polar bears, while their habitat is being auctioned off.

Other countries around the world are no different. Everywhere there is a crisis; everyone wants rare earth elements. Drooling over the remaining fragments of living nature, governments are trying to calculate their "potential profits." They ignore society, scientists, and field experts alike.

Today I want to tell you about the situation in Kyrgyzstan. Russia's neighboring post-Soviet state has announced that it is considering a Cabinet of Ministers decree introducing a 20-year moratorium on reducing the area of specially protected natural territories (SPNAs) and on lowering their protection status.

Quite a remarkable piece of news, isn't it? While Russia and the United States are opening protected areas to development and placing enormous pressure on the last refuges of wildlife in the interests of big business, tiny Kyrgyzstan is officially proposing a MORATORIUM on large-scale business interference in protected lands.

According to the published information, the ban would apply to state nature reserves, national parks, and other categories of protected areas. Exceptions would be allowed only for expanding protected territories, responding to natural disasters, and decisions related to national security and defense. The authors of the proposal themselves justified the initiative by pointing to the increasingly powerful lobbying efforts of business interests, which have actively promoted changing the boundaries of protected areas for infrastructure projects, resource extraction, and similar purposes.

In effect, the state is now acknowledging that there is systemic pressure on the country's protected area network. The very introduction of a moratorium is itself an admission that the existing legal safeguards are insufficient to guarantee the inviolability of nature reserves. Otherwise, why introduce a separate 20-year prohibition if no problem exists?

It is worth noting that Kyrgyzstan's network of protected areas currently covers 7.38% of the country's territory and includes 10 state nature reserves, 13 natural parks, and 64 wildlife sanctuaries. Yet these territories are protected by only 356 personnel, of whom just 246 are rangers and foresters. I should emphasize that Kyrgyzstan is A MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY, and the overwhelming majority of its ecosystems serve as wildlife refugia—places where biological systems recover naturally. These are areas of exceptional value! For a country with vast, inaccessible landscapes, having only 246 rangers and foresters is critically insufficient even to combat ordinary poaching. What, then, can be said about large corporate giants eager to seize and appropriate the country's protected natural wealth?

That is precisely why the decision to introduce a moratorium is both timely and appropriate, especially now, when the entire world has rushed to destroy protected areas. A 20-year horizon is an excellent proposal, providing enough time to outlast the current global crisis and all the chaos we are witnessing. If Kyrgyzstan introduces a 20-year moratorium, then by the time it expires the rest of the world will be reaping the consequences of its own madness, while the Republic of Kyrgyzstan will possess a genuine mountain sanctuary for wildlife—an invaluable treasure. Hopefully, during that time the system can be transformed toward establishing Territories of Complete Ecological Tranquility (TCETs).

I would very much like to speak with the authors of the current proposal, as well as representatives of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the republic. Establishing contact is essential, and perhaps it is with Kyrgyzstan that we can begin a dialogue on creating the world's first Territories of Complete Ecological Tranquility (TCETs). If the authors of this proposal or interested representatives of the Government are reading my article, please get in touch. Let us work together. At the very least, I would like to receive more comments from you and share them with the public.

At the same time, I also understand that the main purpose of the current initiative is to close a long-standing pathway that has been used to weaken the country's protected area system. The reason is that a government-approved procedure adopted in 2015 currently allows changes to the categories and boundaries of protected areas, provided there is a favorable conclusion from the state environmental assessment, other expert reviews, and the National Academy of Sciences. Furthermore, the document explicitly lists grounds for abolishing a protected area, including the loss of its environmental, scientific, or recreational significance.

If I understand the situation correctly, the Government of Kyrgyzstan fully recognizes the scale of the pressure that has existed since 2015 and is now making the decision to introduce a moratorium on any further interference with the country's protected area system. In that case, the moratorium is intended specifically to halt the development of protected areas and place an "iron door" in front of them.

It seems to me that the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan should share its practical experience with other countries, including Russia. If the weakening of protection that began in 2015 caused irreversible damage to wildlife, this should serve as a real example for other nations and encourage them to stop making the same mistakes. This is something I would very much like to discuss separately with representatives of the Government.

Could the current decision to introduce a moratorium on interference in protected areas be considered an emergency institutional brake? To answer this, it would be necessary to collect all projects aimed at reducing the protection status of existing reserves since 2015, overlay them with mapping data, resource extraction projects, logging plans, road construction, and so forth. Only then can we understand how earlier practices have affected the republic's priceless natural heritage. If any scientists or experts have worked on this issue, I kindly ask you to send me information—I would be sincerely grateful.

I am aware of the case involving Chon-Kemin National Park, where in March 2024 Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Natural Resources itself submitted for public discussion a proposal to exclude two mineral deposits from the park's boundaries: the Kutessay-II rare earth deposit and the Kalesai beryllium deposit. The explanatory note explicitly stated that the initiative was intended to attract investment into the mining sector. This was a genuine industrial invasion, actively promoted and justified by the republic's own environmental authority.

The second case is even more alarming: Besh-Aral Nature Reserve, which forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage property "Western Tien-Shan." Local residents wrote to me about it and asked for help. In 2023, the government reclassified 200 hectares of the reserve from specially protected land into land designated for industry, transport, communications, energy, defense, and other uses. The official justification was the construction of a road, followed by a border outpost, a hydropower station, and related economic development. Local authorities openly linked the road project to future gold mining.

I recently published a major article explaining that, over the past several years, gold mining companies in Russia alone have polluted tens of thousands of kilometers of rivers. It is an enormous problem, and we even managed to secure official recognition of these facts by the federal Government. Yet, as the saying goes, "the cart is still there": nothing has been resolved. Worse still, mining companies are now asking for permission to destroy protected areas in pursuit of gold. Isn't that madness?

Therefore, attempts by the Government of Kyrgyzstan to carve up a nature reserve that forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the interests of big business are, of course, a very serious mistake. We are witnessing the direct intrusion of infrastructure and resource interests into a sanctuary of wildlife.

While studying information about the republic, I also see a clear conflict of interests. If I understand correctly, there are people within the government who genuinely believe in protecting the country's natural heritage. However, pressure from industrial lobbying groups is enormous, and the protected area system is constantly being breached. Consider this: in 2019, the President of Kyrgyzstan signed a law prohibiting the exploration and development of uranium and thorium deposits. Yet in June 2024, only a few years later, a new law repealed that ban in the name of achieving a "balance" between environmental safety and the use of strategically important resources. And now, in 2026, we again see the Government attempting a far more radical measure—a 20-year moratorium intended to completely cut off the interests of big business and halt the ongoing attacks on the country's protected area system.

I would also like to add something else. I have been following developments in Kyrgyzstan for many years, and previously informed my readers that in 2023 the authorities attempted to ban wolf hunting. Wolves, after all, are the sanitarians of the wild. The proposal was to prohibit shooting them above 2,000 meters above sea level. It is worth emphasizing that this elevation serves as a vital refuge for wolf populations. Across the world, wolves are being exterminated on an unprecedented scale, with virtually no conservation programs in place, while Kyrgyzstan was proposing a genuine compromise.

However, the Ministry of Natural Resources later announced that wolves would not be included in the final list of protected species, and the hunting regulations approved by the Cabinet of Ministers in February 2025 explicitly established that hunting wolves and jackals would neither be limited nor regulated.

Once again, we see attempts to introduce the RIGHT measures and restrictions—only for someone to systematically strike them down.

As for the nature of Kyrgyzstan itself, the republic is one of the few countries in the world whose territory is 94% covered by mountains. This means that some of the planet's most important ecosystems are concentrated here: hydrological, climatic, and, of course, protected ecosystems—the biological backbone of an entire macro-region. Approximately 2% of the world's flora and more than 3% of its fauna occur within the country, placing Kyrgyzstan among the world's most valuable biodiversity hotspots. A true refugium!

Yet perhaps the most strategically important fact for humanity is that roughly 45% of all glaciers in Central Asia are located within Kyrgyzstan, while around 40% of the region's freshwater resources originate here. In essence, Kyrgyzstan serves as the "water tower" of Central Asia. If forests are lost here, if high-mountain slopes degrade, if roads are driven through protected valleys, and if protected lands are transformed, the consequences will affect agriculture across Central Asia and ultimately the lives of millions of people in neighboring countries.

That is why protecting Kyrgyzstan's nature reserves is an issue of tremendous importance, and the entire world should pay close attention.

I understand that earlier decisions had already placed the republic's protected area system at risk. But what the authorities are now attempting demonstrates an exceptionally rare case in which a state, despite immense pressure from infrastructure and resource interests, is nevertheless trying to say: wildlife has the right to Life, and we must protect it for future generations.

Especially considering that the rest of the world, without any real understanding of what it is doing, is tearing apart the remaining fragments of Earth's protected area system, depriving not only nature of its chance to survive, but also future generations.

© PAVEL PASHKOV