Grave cross for Lake Baikal

The State Duma is about to approve continuous logging along the shores of the lake. One of the goals is an abnormal expansion of cemeteries

The government commission approved the amendments to the Law on Lake Baikal, which allow continuous logging along the shores of the lake. Soon the bill may be passed by the State Duma.

The document had already passed the first reading in parliament two years ago-in July 2023. Due to criticism from environmental organizations and the scientific community, he promised to seriously finalize the second reading. But, it seems, they did not finish anything, but decided to go the other way.

Already in 2023, in the wake of critics of the bill in the country, Greenpeace*was banned. And the Patriotic alternative to this organization, the Compass Foundation made a film about the need for felling.

In the winter of 2025, one of the lobbyists of the document, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, managed to achieve the support of the idea from Vladimir Putin. He put the resolution “agree” in a letter in which the logging was presented necessary to ensure the life of the settlements on the coast of Lake Baikal.

“The creation of fire breaks on the border of the village is impossible in connection with a ban on deforestation. <...> The transfer of lands from the forest fund for the land of industry is prohibited for the construction of treatment plants, the cutting of trees at the site of the construction of the treatment plants, as well as for engineering communications, is prohibited. <...> When repairing roads and bridges, a temporary detour and expansion of the highway is required, in connection with which the cutting of trees is required, ”Tsydenov said in a letter.

Supporters of felling these arguments cited earlier. There were more emotional: for example, that there is nowhere to bury people in Baikal.

But if you discard emotions and look at additional materials to the bill, then many questions arise.

For starters - about those same cemeteries. In the village of Shida, where 28 people live, with the help of continuous cutting the cemetery is planned to expand by 2 hectares - this is about 5,000 graves. In Slyudyanka, where 19,000 people live, they want to increase the number of burials by 62,000. And even in the village of Shumikha, where no one lives, just in case they want to expand the local cemetery by 1000 graves.

Also, the construction of roads is left in the bill: and in which quantities it is unknown. Ecologists are afraid that we are not talking about the reconstruction of existing roads to the settlements (for this, there are just continuous cutting), but about laying new highways to planned resorts. For example, last year, Cosmos Hotel Group (AFK System) announced the desire to build a five stars of the Nameless Hotel of the Beykali Bay of the Baikal Bay. To do this, you will have to cut down about 400 hectares of forest, which is now impossible to do. But if the bill is adopted, the construction of both the complex and the road to it will become possible.

Tourism in general can become the main driver of the Baikal felling: so, back in 2023, environmental journalists found that the largest of the sections already planned - 553 hectares - adjacent to the resort of Mount Sobolinova, owned by Oleg Deripaska's structures.

Probably, we are talking about expanding the resort.

It is precisely such moments - when, under the guise of concern for residents, the interests of business are promoting or an incomprehensible expansion of cemeteries - and confuse opponents of the bill. But not only.

Dogs will inevitably lead to the degradation of the lake itself: there will be no forest - and the rains will begin to wash off organic matter in Baikal, which means that the “flowering” of water will increase. Instead of transparent, more and more often, Baikal water will become green, filled with malicious threaded algae spirogirs. This will become a disaster for living creatures: mollusks and bulls will suffer (they cannot live in areas of the bottom covered with spirogyra), a omul that eats caviar bulls will suffer after them, and after the omul is the Baikal seal.

In addition, everything designated is poorly correlated with the fact that continuous cutting in accordance with the bill will affect only sick and dead trees. However, no forest pathological examinations that would show that the Baikal forests are sick. Moreover, sanitary cutting, which in theory are indeed a form of concern for the forest, in practice often become an instrument of its destruction: it is no coincidence that the largest illegal cabin in the history of Russia is the sanitary. In 2021, the companies of the Irkutsk deputy Yevgeny Bakurov caught 15,000 hectares of allegedly sick forest on a cut, which turned out to be healthy. A fine of 2 billion rubles was assigned, but the enterprises were not paid by starting bankruptcy proceedings.

Ecologists note that cutting in Lake Baikal is very beneficial for forest producers, because we are talking about pristine forests, that is, wood of the highest quality, near a large buyer - China.

In the environmental and scientific community, the amendments are still hoping to recapture: the project “The Earth applies to everyone” calls on to write to the State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin with an appeal to show principles and prevent continuous cutting in Lake Baikal. In 2023, Volodin really stated that it was not necessary to blame the forest on the lake. But then there was no position of the government and Vladimir Putin. And whether the chairman of the State Duma will go against them for the sake of preserving Baikal is very doubtful.

Amendments to the Baikal bill introduced to the second reading suggest that all decisions on the life around the lake will be made by a special commission - and only after the conclusion of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the head of the Duma Ecology Committee Dmitry Kobylkin told Interfax.

* Declared in the Russian Federation an undesirable organization, its activities are prohibited