The State Duma Committee on Ecology considered a revised version of the government bill allowing changes in the boundaries of specially protected natural areas (SPNA). Its main innovation is still the ability to build “facilities of federal significance” on lands freed from encumbrances, but the document has been adjusted. Thus, only the President of the Russian Federation or the Prime Minister can give an order to reduce the boundaries of protected areas; the commission for formalizing this decision will include scientists, in addition to officials, deputies and special services, and this body will be headed by a specialized Deputy Prime Minister.
Draft amendments to the law “On Specially Protected Natural Areas” were submitted by the Russian government to the State Duma in December 2025. The document makes it possible to change, including narrowing, the boundaries of existing protected areas, and to build facilities on lands freed from encumbrances (capital construction is now practically prohibited there). We are talking about objects that have a “significant impact on the socio-economic development of the Russian Federation.” The decision on such construction projects will be made by a commission of officials, deputies and representatives of the special services. There is no list of objects in the document. But in other laws, such objects include, say, highways and railways.
The State Duma adopted the amendments in the first reading in March of this year, although they were previously criticized by the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation: deputies then spent more than an hour finding out whether it was possible to build commercial facilities on the former lands of protected areas under the guise of state construction projects (see Kommersant on March 18). In April, a group of 120 scientists (including 13 corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences) complained that the adoption of the project creates the preconditions for “environmentally destructive types of economic activity.”
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, there are about 12 thousand nature reserves, national parks and other protected areas in Russia, including 342 federal territories, 10.6 thousand regional and 918 local ones. The total area of protected areas is over 240 million hectares.
The document presented on April 17 at a meeting of the Duma Committee on Ecology has undergone changes. Thus, according to the head of the committee, Dmitry Kobylkin (ER), only the President of the Russian Federation or the Prime Minister can give orders to change the boundaries of protected areas or place objects there. In this case, the order must have a positive conclusion from the state environmental assessment, obtain a visa from Rosprirodnadzor, and only after that be sent to the commission mentioned above. The amendments proposed to include two representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the federal commission, and it should be headed by a specialized deputy prime minister. The possibility for the commission to make decisions on the boundaries of protected areas in absentia format is excluded from the document, Mr. Kobylkin emphasized.
At the same time, the amendments removed the provision on the possibility of removing the protective status of a protected area if it “irreversibly lost its environmental functions.”
Dmitry Kobylkin clarified that such an action will be possible only for “natural monuments, the loss of which can be proven.” Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology Georgy Arapov (“New People”) noted that arson and other illegal actions do not apply to such reasons. “The bill will not at all become an amnesty for violations committed previously or now. Everything that happens with someone’s zeal in protected areas is illegal, and this is a matter for the competent authorities,” the deputy assured. Mr. Arapov also made it clear that the amendments approved by the committee will include rules on the need, when withdrawing a site, to add to the protected area lands of “no less area and value for environmental activities.” This package of amendments also included a provision that the protection regimes for protected areas can only be tightened and not weakened, the deputy added.
From Mr. Kobylkin’s words it followed that the deputies discussed these amendments and agreed upon them with the Ministry of Natural Resources. This was actually confirmed at the hearing by Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Svetlana Khodneva, who said that “significant substantive changes have occurred” in the document. According to Georgy Arapov, there are a number of other proposals “that are worth paying attention to.” For example, Vladimir Sysoev (LDPR) expressed the idea of a legislative ban on the seizure of protected areas lands under the protection of UNESCO. According to the parliamentarian, the idea was discussed with the Ministry of Natural Resources, but there is no joint decision on it yet.
Mr. Kobylkin said that the text of the bill will still be finalized for the second reading in the State Duma. According to Georgy Arapov, for its final adoption it will be necessary to approve 12 more regulations. The deputy hopes that the State Duma will see them “before the law comes into force.”
