Environmentalists are trying to restore the scientific department at the Lazovsky Nature Reserve in Primorye.
Expert Council on Nature Reserves sent A complaint has been filed with the Prosecutor General's Office. They demand a review of the decision to cut the scientific department at the Lazovsky Nature Reserve in Primorsky Krai and the punishment of the officials who approved these changes.
The department was downsized in early June, and now consists solely of a monitoring department. In May, environmentalists tried to intercede for their fellow scientists, collecting about 50 signatures and filing a complaint with the Ministry of Natural Resources. But they received a formal reply.
They point out that the reserve's management's actions violate legislation and pose a threat to Russia's entire protected area system. Furthermore, in recent years, the Amur tiger has been one of the Lazovsky Reserve's primary research subjects, but an experienced zoologist specializing in this predator was fired. The experts are demanding that the Ministry of Natural Resources officials involved in these changes be held accountable.
"The approval of this structure by the relevant department (the Ministry of Natural Resources – editor's note) untied the hands of the director of the Federal State Budgetary Institution to make subsequent management decisions that ignore the historical traditions of Russian nature conservation and common sense," the letter to the Prosecutor General's Office stated.
The scientific department at the Lazovsky Nature Reserve in Primorye stopped exist in early June. The management cut the number of distinguished scientists and suggested They were paid the rates of cleaners and mechanics. In a conversation with NeMoskva, Vsevolod Stepanitsky, a distinguished ecologist of Russia familiar with the situation, noted that the reason for the layoffs was the scientists' independent position on the management's opinion.