Road construction in protected areas will lead to wildfires, deforestation, and ecosystem degradation.

The protected area system of our country, like nature reserves worldwide, must remain intact. Untouched! No “economic justification” is appropriate when the issue is the preservation of the planet’s natural heritage, on which not only wildlife but humanity itself depends.

Simple facts: OUR OWN HABITAT is being destroyed.

Unfortunately, officials do not understand this—or do not want to understand. Scientific assessments are ignored! It has reached the point where, for momentary profit, they are ready to fell Baikal’s ancient forests, carry out clear-cuts across all the country’s mountain ecosystems, and lay roads through the heart of protected lands.

This last point is what I want to discuss with my readers today. We are constantly told that roads must be built in protected areas. We are assured that there is nothing frightening about it—“we will carefully lay the route through the ancient forest” and cause no harm. And when we ask in return, “Why do you need roads in the wilderness at all?”, we are told, “To fight wildfires! To save wildlife.”

Let us examine this issue now.

First.

In reality, no one is even talking seriously about wildfires. The only interest for officials is the legalization of road construction so that large businesses can buy up territories for further exploitation. Where there are roads, there is timber extraction, industrial resource mining, tourism clusters, and so on.

Second.

All modern scientific studies—tragically, based on real-world experience—show that road construction itself leads to a sharp rise in logging, wildfires, and ecosystem degradation. ROADS ARE THE PRIMARY DRIVER OF ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS. Therefore any references by officials to “we build them to extinguish wildfires” have absolutely no foundation. They are just words.

Let me explain.

First of all, a road “cuts” through forest space, creating a long cleared strip and breaking the continuity of forest massifs. Suppose the authorities now want to build a road straight through Losiny Ostrov National Park: imagine the reserve simply split in half, with a constant flow of heavy machinery and vehicles at the epicenter. Continuous pollution—noise, light, and toxic substances—always causes microclimatic changes, disrupts air and soil moisture, and increases wind load. The penetration of anthropogenic pollutants—sound, light, chemicals, heavy particles—triggers rapid ecosystem degradation.

It is also essential to understand that any ecosystem is a closed, self-sustaining organism! When the ecosystem is cut into parts and roads are laid, all biological rhythms (nature’s immune system) are instantly disrupted, and invasive organisms are introduced into the habitat.

Can anyone stop the further degradation? Naturally, no.

Next.

When main routes are built, so-called “secondary” roads invariably follow—various clearings, tracks, and trails. Brand-new scientific data—for example, the 2025 study “Rapid expansion of secondary road networks linked to widespread tropical deforestation”—show that secondary roads branching off main ones cause far greater forest loss than the main roads themselves. In the Congo Basin, deforestation associated with secondary roads was more than 31 times higher. In New Guinea, secondary roads increased forest loss by 22.2 times.

These are the findings of global scientists in fresh data! Researchers from Australia, Brazil, Germany, and Britain worked on the study.

Will any officials study objective research and factor it in before they begin destroying Russia’s protected areas? I doubt it.

Interestingly, in the Amazon, every kilometer of primary road spawned about 49 km of secondary roads, which caused 305 times more deforestation than the primary road itself. Can you imagine that scale?

I cite regions with the highest biodiversity and real tragedy, where, exactly as our officials are now attempting, the protected system was simply torn apart.

Look.

The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest tropical forest. From 2003 to 2018, the length of roads through protected areas there grew by 60 %, and deforestation rates increased by 400 %. Moreover, the highest forest loss occurred within just 1 km of roads.

Let us turn to another scientific work—this 2022 study by the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment titled “Mapping roads in the Brazilian Amazon using artificial intelligence and Sentinel-2 satellite data.” According to scientists, 95 % of deforested plots in the Amazon rainforest lie within 5.5 km of roads.

In other words, virtually ALL DEFORESTATION occurs within road reach. Road construction is also accompanied by further “development”—infrastructure, tourist facilities, settlements, and industrial resource extraction.

I always tell my readers that any intervention in the wilderness must be assessed HOLISTICALLY AND COMPREHENSIVELY. Every road has a multiplicative effect—even if only a narrow strip is planned, electricity will soon be brought in, additional ditches and canals dug, secondary roads opened, and fires deliberately set to burn stumps, gradually slicing chunk after chunk from the living flesh of nature.

Now I want to address the most important issue—wildfires. Officials rely on this argument when trying to gain access to protected areas, speaking of what they do not understand at all. Yet “we fight wildfires, that’s why we need roads” sounds noble—turning nature’s destruction into a righteous mission, doesn’t it?

Here is a reliable scientific fact: most major wildfires arise precisely in areas where people can easily drive into the wilderness.

In the United States, scientists compared the density of fire outbreaks on forest-service lands near roads and far from them. They found that a 50 km zone along roads burns at least 4–5 times more often than roadless protected areas. The farther from a road, THE LESS FREQUENT THE FIRES. This proves that roads concentrate ignitions.

I found similar studies in other countries. In the Amazon, 85 % of fires occur within 5 km of roads. Research on the Italian island of Sardinia (a mix of forests and shrublands) showed that fire hotspots are overwhelmingly concentrated near roads across all vegetation types.

In October 2024 an interesting study was published— I believe I mentioned it earlier—called “Road fragment edges increase wildfire frequency and intensity while reducing total burned area.” Using computer modeling, the authors demonstrated that splitting a forest with roads alone increases the burned area by more than 20 %. In other words, the mere FACT of increasing road density potentially means wildfires in that area will grow by at least dozens of percent.

The point is that the edges of wilderness fragmented by roads begin to degrade. They are dry and unstable; one spark is enough to ignite everything! Nature cannot defend itself—its immune system is disrupted, microclimatic circulation is essentially killed, the transfer of matter and energy is gone.

Thus, scientists worldwide state unequivocally that IN ALL STUDIED DATA, WILDFIRE SCALE SHARPLY DECREASES WHEN ALL ROADS ARE CUT OFF AND INCREASES WHEN ROADS APPEAR.

Separate materials could be devoted to other cascading threats to forests: from altered hydrology and erosion to the influx of millions of tourists and poaching. But these are all separate topics!

Right now it is crucial to show the real picture: road construction in protected areas is UNACCEPTABLE. Any statements by officials that it is “absolutely necessary for firefighting” are unfounded and serve only as PR campaigns to justify the actual seizure of protected-area rent.

They now want to build a road network around Lake Baikal—prepare for destructive wildfires even where they have never occurred. Afterwards the forest will be “urgently logged for sanitation.” The same applies to Losiny Ostrov National Park inside Moscow, and to every mountain ecosystem in our country where officials are now legalizing clear-cuts even in the most vital PROTECTIVE category forests.

Allies! We are trying to prevent this, but we need your support. Without you we will not succeed. Follow the links to citizen initiatives to help stop this madness.

• Public initiative against large-scale development of Baikal
• Public initiative against road construction in Losiny Ostrov National Park
• Public initiative against the destruction of Russia’s mountain forests

© PAVEL PASHKOV