The Ministry of Natural Resources proposes to resolve the destruction of red -hot plants and mushrooms for the construction and mining of minerals

The Ministry of Natural Resources has prepared a draft amendments to the law “On Environmental Protection”, which will allow “seize” red -black plants and mushrooms for the sake of capital construction. The department sent the project to scientific organizations, Kommersant reports . The publication notes that in 2021 the department already proposed a similar initiative, but abandoned it after public discussions.

According to amendments, if the entrepreneur does not have the opportunity to build an object outside the habitats of red -hot plants and mushrooms, he may allow him to “extract (collection, seizure)”. Such an option is designated as "exceptional cases." Also, the destruction of red -billing species is assumed for "ensuring the safe functioning of existing capital construction projects."

The same amendments offer to equate mushrooms with rare plants so that they also receive legislative protection. According to officials, this will force the business to “develop and carry out events” to protect not only Red Book plants, but also mushrooms. To preserve such plants and mushrooms, the Ministry of Natural Resources even proposes to "create specially protected natural territories."

The proposed amendments legalize the destruction of red -black plants and mushrooms, according to the experts of the environmental project “Earth concerns everyone”.

“In places of habitat [plants and mushrooms] it will be possible to build capital construction objects, including linear facilities, or implement other economic activities, for example, minerals, place sports and tourist facilities. Populations and entire species that are under the real threat of extinction will be in an even more extreme situation. The adoption of the bill will lead to a strong deterioration in the state of rare and vulnerable objects of the plant world, the destruction of their habitat, ”explains the expert on specially protected natural territories of the“ Earth ”Mikhail Kraindlin.

The ability to destroy the red -black plants, for example, is already registered in materials for public discussions about the construction of a ski lift in the Sochi National Park. The authors of the document admit that the Red Book Iglitsa Kolchidskaya grows in the areas where they plan construction, but they assure that to preserve rare species of plants “a transplant is provided”.

The Ministry of Natural Resources regularly initiates changes to the legislation that are sharply criticized by the expert ecological community. At the end of 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Federation Council discussed the possibility of reorganizing and changing the boundaries of protected areas for the sake of mining. A year before, the Ministry of Natural Resources held a secret meeting, which proposed to cut out lands from reserves and national parks, wrote Kedr (recognized as an ino -agent). However, in the end, the idea was not implemented.

In the spring of 2023, the State Duma deputy Viktor Pinsky submitted to the parliament to amend the Law “On Special Particularly Protected Natural Territories”, which, as ecologists said , would jeopardize about 85% of the existing protected areas, but because of the expert community and thousands of ordinary citizens, they were not accepted.

The Ministry of Natural Resources also proposed to allow the destruction of rare animals for the sake of "preventing the suffering of sick or injured objects of the animal world." After a flurry of criticism, the department announced that it would be finalized by the decision on the extraction of red -black animals.