The new legislation aims to ensure full-fledged environmental and fire safety and to uphold the rights of residents of the Baikal nature territory, according to the official website of the Trans-Baikal Territory.

The law expressly forbids all-out wood-cutting operations in the central environmental zone of Lake Baikal, except sectors with dead trees and where selective wood-cutting produce no results.

“Although the law strictly limits any economic activity in the central environmental zone of Lake Baikal, it authorizes the conversion of forest land plots into other categories, located in the central environmental zone, if there are no other options for establishing or expanding burial grounds, for building and reconstructing facilities for the prevention of floods, landslides and other negative impact, as well as for building roads, bridges and utility infrastructure facilities. In such cases, forests should be reclaimed on areas exceeding regional land plots five times over,” Bair Zhamsuyev from the Trans-Baikal Territory’s Legislature noted.

The Government of the Russian Federation will list forest land plots and areas where all-out wood-cutting operations are allowed, by agreement with the Russian Academy of Sciences and a specially formed commission.  

Additionally, the document bans the creation of new special economic zones in the central environmental zone of Lake Baikal, except those now existing in the Republic of Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region.