—I caught myself thinking that when I hear “conservationist,” my mind immediately jumps to those activist protests—like throwing tomato soup over Van Gogh paintings or chaining yourself to a cruiser in a T-shirt with a catchy slogan… And if we dig into history, Greenpeace, one of the world’s largest environmental organizations, also grew out of activist protests; back in the day, that approach worked remarkably well. I’d like to clarify something here. What role do activist protests play in conservation? Are they helpful, or do they just get in the way of “real” full-time  conservationists—we’ll talk more about them in a moment—doing their work?
— Protest activism is just one form of environmental conservation—it’s loud but far from the most extensive. It worked well fifty years ago and still works today. Greenpeace uses it very strategically as a tool. Yes, they understand that some protests can annoy or even alienate smart people open to dialogue. But they can always return to these people later with rational arguments. For now, protests attract the broadest public attention, sparking a reaction even among those who haven’t considered the need to protect the planet. And it might inspire some of them to get involved in solving the problem. Protests often provoke responses like, “They’re just making noise, while we know the better way.” The goal of protests is to draw attention to the issue, not to the protest itself. And it seems that protest activism is still achieving that goal effectively today. I understand this tool well, but I’m more among those who don’t feel particularly close to it and even find it somewhat unpleasant.
But excessive emotions without a basis in facts can indeed do more harm than good to the environmental movement. Many people come to this work out of love for nature. Some loved dogs or cats when they were children, some were deeply moved by the sight of stray animals and how people treat them—these emotions are very vivid in childhood and can become a lifelong cause.
But when someone is driven by such emotions to join the environmental movement and doesn’t gain knowledge about the structure of ecosystems, it becomes a problem. In dialogue with businesspeople, managers, and decision-makers, such conservationists often resort to shaming: “How can you not love nature? Our great country should have great nature. We need to preserve it.” And that doesn’t work. Such laments are easy to counter: “We do love nature, but we have to live somehow.” And that ends the discussion.
I first heard this as a first-year student at the biology faculty of Gorky University. We had come to meet with a timber businessman to discuss setting aside a forest area for conservation and possibly creating a “zakaznik,” a type of nature reservation. He said, “So you guys have found two birds and three butterflies. While me, I have people to feed.”
It’s a completely different matter when you build a dialogue based on rational arguments. For that, you need to acquire specialized knowledge. I’ll share a basic thought: Ecology is actually the science of the environment (although sometimes the word is used to refer to environmental activism itself). Science can show why and how all of this matters—those two birds and three butterflies. Science has rational arguments. And outside of science, there’s activism of varying levels of knowledge.

— So making noise and solving the problem are still two different things, and a professional conservationist will likely use other methods (while keeping in mind the option to make noise if it benefits the cause)?
— Let me make a small digression. Greenpeace once had a great slogan along the lines of “I don’t want to protect the environment; I want to live in a world where it doesn’t need protecting, where it’s already conserved.” You see, I’d probably prefer not to have to focus on protecting the environment. “Professional conservationist” sounds just as strange as “professional revolutionary” did back in the day. You’ve made a revolution here—where should you go now to make the next one? Or will you just keep making it in the same place? It’s the same with a “professional conservationist.”
There are many issues in the world that have an environmental component. Locally, there are countless such problems, but they easily group together under social or economic trends. Scientific teams work on finding solutions to entire groups of these problems. But as soon as scientists find a solution, they often step away from the process, assuming that others will take it from there. But usually, people don’t. Conservationists, by contrast, are those who, for one reason or another, can’t just stop—they’re the ones who take the solutions scientists find and see them through to practical implementation.

— So you put into practice the solutions proposed by scientists—even if they seem to contradict the slogan “We have to feed people”?
— That’s where the importance of a scientific approach comes in. It doesn’t rely on appeals to pity. Instead, it shows that this contradiction is only apparent—in reality, it doesn’t exist. Simply put, in the long run, you can’t feed people without preserving those three butterflies. We should focus not on how sad it is to lose two birds and three butterflies but on what scientists call ecological balance, with concrete examples rather than abstractions. History has given us plenty of examples of ecological crises where reduced biodiversity and shrinking undisturbed areas have led to negative consequences.

— As in?
— One of the most striking examples is the Sahel tragedy. In the middle of the last century, the countries of the Sahel—a region stretching across Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean along the southern edge of the Sahara—were supplying nearly all of Western Europe with meat. Just like in the Soviet Union, where a girl turned a guy down and he’d head off to build the BAM railway, young men in 1930s Britain, when spurned, would set off for Africa to work in agriculture. And the most profitable type of agriculture there was livestock farming.
In the 1970s, the Sahel experienced another period of extreme drought. This kind of event is always a challenge for ecosystems, and by that time, the ecosystems had been heavily altered by overgrazing; the shrubland vegetation had almost been completely eradicated… And that’s when the tragedy struck. The livestock died, and meat exports stopped, resulting in economic losses. Then came the famine and a massive rise in child mortality, and the Sahara’s boundary shifted significantly south. The region has never recovered from the aftermath of this catastrophe; its once-high economic importance has been lost, and poverty and unfavorable conditions still persist there.
This example made headlines around the world, but there are many others, although identifying them is more challenging. Take my dissertation on Gorky Oblast. I compared its administrative districts based on indicators such as disease rates, crop yields, and life expectancy and correlated these with the areas of undisturbed ecosystems, excluding the city of Nizhny Novgorod and urban agglomerations like Dzerzhinsk, for example.
At first, I didn’t notice any patterns. But then I looked at how much was being spent on healthcare and social services, and I found an interesting effect. In order for life expectancy in different districts to be at roughly the same level, more money had to be spent on healthcare in districts with disturbed natural areas. Simply put, if you cut down 100 hectares of forest, you’d have to add a bed to the local hospital. I should emphasize that I couldn’t obtain statistically reliable results, but the trend was clear. Perhaps if that kind of work were done in several regions with similar natural conditions, convincing statistics could be obtained.

— All of this sounds very rational. Are there any examples where the entire chain of causal relationships is clear—from, say, deforestation to a bed in the local hospital?
— In the last couple of decades, the term “ecosystem services” has been actively used to describe such effects. It’s one of the key concepts in the sustainability agenda. These ecosystem services are being calculated in economic terms, and science has already accumulated quite a few examples.
How does it work? For instance, deforestation significantly reduces the soil’s water-holding capacity. Trees can accumulate huge amounts of water, and when they are cut down, all the excess starts flowing into the rivers. As a result, the flood level is higher and the low-water level is lower. To manage land in such areas, compensation has to be made. For instance, through irrigation. And water washes away nutrients from the ecosystem, and this has to be compensated with fertilizers. On a larger scale, it’s even possible to calculate whether the profits gained from deforestation cover the costs incurred to compensate for the environmental consequences. This field is actively developing now, and scientists are already able to estimate quite accurately the lost profits and the costs due to ecosystem disruption. Of course, disturbed ecosystems also provide ecosystem services, but they do so much less efficiently than undisturbed ones.
Here are your rational arguments for why we need to protect the environment. And it would be great if environmental education and awareness provided people with more such examples—both local and global. To, as they say, “think globally, act locally.”

— And what tools do you use to address problems locally? Do you take what scientists have concluded and…?
— This is a complex question. Usually, it all starts with something very simple and often unnoticed. First, we identify the problem, then we find experts who can speak about it, and we give them the opportunity to speak publicly. This draws attention from people, including those who make decisions. This isn’t even lobbying; we operate on the premise that all people, in general, are good and that you can negotiate with anyone. Everyone wants fewer conflicts and complicated situations. We identify the problem, develop a solution, draw the right people’s attention—and some of the problems are solved right at this stage. The solution may not be one; there could be several, and then, through dialogue, we come to the most convinient one for everyone concerned.
A solution that I often propose from my side is to establish a specially protected natural area (PA).

— Let’s take a closer look at those areas. What types are there, and what distinguishes them? Strict nature reserves, national parks—what other forms of nature protection do we have? It seems like almost everyone has heard these terms, but few understand the difference between them. And how are those areas created?
— Let’s start with a zapovednik, or strict nature reserve. A zapovednik is the most strictly protected area. Nothing is allowed there, except for research and limited visits. Visits should also be allowed only with a reserve representative assistance. Once again: nothing can be done, only research, only observation.
In a national park, unlike a nature reserve, there are several zones. A core reserve area, akin to a zapovednik, should be established where all human activity is prohibited. This may be encircled by zones that allow recreational use and even some business, but with strict regulations. In other words, you need to ensure that the natural complex that existed at the time the park was established stays intact—this is the whole point.
A natural park is essentially the same as a national park, but with a different level of authority. As the name suggests, a national park is a federal PA, while a natural park is regional; these are created and managed by the subjects of Russia.
Then we have zakazniks—PAs with greatly varying management systems. Some can be strict PAs, essentially operating under the same rules as a nature reserve, depending on the level of threat to the natural features they protect. The logic here is that measures are put in place that are sufficient to conserve what the zakaznik aims to protect. There are also natural monuments, which are similar to zakazniks. But whereas a zakaznik protects a large area, a natural monument is a singular feature, such as a mountain, a lake, or any other notable feature, along with the surrounding land.
We also have another form of specially protected natural area, called botanical garden. Some botanical gardens have protected areas, which makes them somewhat similar to national or natural parks. There are, however, very few botanical gardens with their own protected zones. For example, the Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden Institute, the northernmost botanical garden in Russia, has one.
As you can see, PAs are fully or partially removed from economic use by law. It’s not hard to guess that creating them is not easy—economic entities will most often say, “We don’t want to solve the problem this way; it will tie our hands, so let’s avoid creating anything just in case.” Even if there’s no plan or project for economic use of the area, this still happens. Or, instead of the areas that actually need protection, they propose taking a site where nothing is at risk—basically just offloading it. In these cases, we have to go public, write letters, and really push to get our point across. And if all else fails, it’s time for more dramatic action. We’ve had to resort to this at some very painful stages. In general, our work is about communication. Take, for example, the Khibiny National Park. From the day the proposal was made to its actual creation, 101 years passed. It ended up being the longest process to create a national park in the world.
But if we disregard the initial proposal phase and focus solely on the time from the start of the design process, it lasted some thirty years. The Khibiny is both a mining region and a tourist area, a region of high natural value, and, because of a long history of industrial development, a disturbed area. And finding a balance of interests has been a delicate task. On the other hand, since it’s a popular destination, it holds particular importance for conservationists. How would the entire movement for environmental protection look if we couldn’t manage to preserve such a site? Over the course of thirty years, different people tried to defend their interests, there were endless discussions and agreements with managers from different fields and levels. We found understanding and support from both the mining sector and officials, and we reached compromises on how to establish the national park in a way that would be comfortable for everyone… But these compromises stalled.

— So what helped move the situation forward?
— The compromises sat idle until an economic project emerged that suggested that all the previous participants in the discussion—the mining industry, the tourism industry, and environmentalists—make room. But there was hardly any room left as it was. Only then did we resort to public appeals and legal action. In 2018, the Khibiny National Park finally saw the light of day. Yes, unfortunately, in territorial conservation, the compromise often isn’t about maximizing the collective benefit of all parties but about minimizing each side’s losses—while ensuring that we, the conservationists, lose no more than our counterparts.
One more brief digression, if I might. In the 1990s, we began to develop some strong institutions for rational nature conservation. The institution of environmental assessment, for example, was a very effective regulatory tool until it was drastically reduced to its current form.
It’s impossible to create rules for every situation, and what might work for Moscow Oblast is unlikely to work in the Far East. That’s why we have very few rigid standards in our environmental legislation, and that’s normal; they used to be replaced by the institution of environmental assessment. Essentially, this is the process of creating local environmental laws, where scientists determine what can and cannot be done in each specific location. The need for that process and the steps involved were outlined in the legislation. But now, it has almost disappeared. Today, environmental assessment is about complying with general legislative requirements; it’s no longer about finding scientific solutions. The mechanisms that began to develop in the 1990s never fully took hold.

— But you still operate within the legal framework?
— Sure. The legislation still provides means we can invoke and use.

— In other words, predicting the structure.
— So, to summarize, what conservationists do is all about endless communication? It’s about conveying scientific achievements to the public, explaining how ecosystems work and how they are connected to the economy, identifying conflicts with environmental protection aspects, communicating with all sides of the conflict, and finding a compromise… It involves both logical persuasion and emotional appeal.

— So, to summarize, what conservationists do is all about endless communication? It’s about conveying scientific achievements to the public, explaining how ecosystems work and how they are connected to the economy, identifying conflicts with environmental protection aspects, communicating with all sides of the conflict, and finding a compromise… It involves both logical persuasion and emotional appeal.
— Yes, and here I would like to emphasize two points. First, environmental protection is always about feedback. We really try to listen to all sides and convey the complexity of ecosystems, where the severe consequences of today’s decisions may only manifest decades later and where it’s better not to let destructive processes unfold. The environment, too, is about feedback, often delayed over time. And second, the foundation of our work is still science, scientific ecology.

— Russia’s agency for protected areas, Roszapovedcenter, reports around 240 SNAs at the federal level and around 12,000 at the regional level. In total, they cover about 12 percent of the country’s territory. Is that really not enough?
— This question is a bit unscientific. Take, for example, the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, recently signed, which says that 30 percent of the total area should be protected. But 12 or 30 percent—these are just averages; they don’t mean much on their own. You have to consider exactly which ecosystems are on this land, the conditions there, and what kind of economic activity needs to be restricted…
In Murmansk Oblast, SNAs occupy just over 13 percent, and that’s not enough. Why? Let me try to explain with a simple analogy. Over the years, a person can gradually go bald, but at what point can they actually be called bald? How many hairs have to remain? It depends a lot on whether their hair is curly or straight and how it falls out. It’s a similar story with ecosystems—they vary a lot: environmental connections in the northern taiga, and especially in the tundra, break down with less disturbance than in the southern taiga.
Or there may no longer even be any economic activity, but it’s still a disrupted and fragmented ecosystem. Restoration processes might be actively underway; yet in these recovering areas, various organisms may multiply, which, in large numbers, become what we call pests. And fragmentation, the severing of natural areas, can be even more destructive than direct economic impacts.
For the whole system and its connections to be stable, a large proportion of undisturbed areas is essential. This is why 30 percent sounds fairly reasonable; but in Murmansk Oblast, the total SNA coverage needs to be even larger.
Our renowned scientist Yablokov was already considering this concept of thirds in the 1970s. He believed that ecological balance could be maintained by dividing all land into thirds: one-third for intensive human use, another third for relatively extensive use, and about one-third left virtually untouched. It’s a very broad idea, but I would follow that approach.

— And if we look at Murmansk Oblast as it is now, what would the proportions be?
— Certainly not equal. We may not be using that much intensively: there are cities, mining sites, a few fields… But last century, logging was very active there, and severe fires followed the logging and forest roads. We cut down and triggered fires on much more than a third of the forested areas we used, and these areas are now in recovery. Ideally, we should have as much protected land as we logged, but currently, it’s only 13 percent.

— TWhile we’re on the topic of the last hundred years, I’m curious about the 20th century. I have the impression that it was a century of major global environmental mistakes. Back then, little was really known about how ecosystems function, and humanity learned many lessons the hard way. Now we’re reflecting on those lessons and trying to learn from them, though we sometimes repeat the same mistakes. How accurate is this observation?
— I won’t even correct you—I often find myself thinking along similar lines. The only thing I’d add is that we tend to consider practices like concentrated logging, open-pit mining, or large reservoirs as mistakes. But we can also view these through the lens of Vernadsky’s ideas and modern ecology. You see, they’re not just mistakes—we’re now living in a transformed world.
The impact on the environment on such a scale highlights that humanity’s energy capacity has increased to the point where we’ve become a geological force. But what does this mean from nature’s perspective? One of the cornerstones of ecology that I like is the concept of ecological succession and climax. But not in Clements’s understanding—rather in the modern, dynamic interpretation of climax.
In protected climax ecosystems, disturbances will still occur, but their scale is very limited. For example, if a tree falls, it creates an opening in the canopy, the soil layer is disturbed, and the restoration process begins—this is succession, but it’s all very localized.
But what does any large-scale project do? It initiates succession over a very large area. Remember I mentioned the stages of ecosystem recovery that are unpleasant for humans? After clear-cutting, the recovery process starts: first, a birch stage, and then a pine forest develops. At some point, we end up with a vast area of uniformly aged pine forest. And pine forests burn very well. So, we have a source of fire hazard over a huge territory.
And that’s a simplified view. Beyond the fire risk, old single-aged forests are also prime breeding grounds for forest pests. Then this forest will start to rapidly decline—even if simply from aging—causing a sharp change in the hydrological balance, as we’ve already discussed.

— So, it turns out we’re not just reflecting from a distance—we’re also reaping the consequences of those past mistakes.
— Yes, the projects were initiated in the last century, but ecological succession is still ongoing in these areas. While timber harvesting in the northern regions, such as Murmansk Oblast, has plummeted by several orders of magnitude, large-scale projects haven’t entirely ceased. For instance, about 15 years ago, there were plans to construct several tidal power stations. Although a single station might not have a dramatic impact, the infrastructure of these stations could substantially disrupt the coastal ecosystem and trigger new cycles of ecological succession.
So, reflection is useful, but it’s even better to draw proper conclusions from it and to analyze current projects intelligently and thoroughly, using all available and advancing scientific tools, so that we don’t end up reflecting on the past but instead learn from it.

— And if we compare our 12 percent with practices abroad, how well—or poorly—are we doing?
— When we talk about “abroad,” you have to keep in mind that the world is incredibly diverse. Some places are doing better, some worse.

— I figured that would be the answer. But is there anything that’s definitely good or definitely bad about our practices?
— You could definitely say that a dedicated agency should oversee protected natural areas.

— But our Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment wears two hats, overseeing both PAs and natural resource management. I understand that different departments handle conservation and management, but it feels like a conflict between the left hand and the right hand.
— Yes, unfortunately, you’re right. I mean, I’ve held a different view for most of my life. I used to think that scientists were the only ones who could really handle running protected areas, because it’s such a technical thing. But I’ve recently begun to reconsider that position.

— So, is the idea that our science stops at theory, and scientists aren’t capable of seeing it through to concrete projects?
— Yes.
But when it comes to our Ministry of Natural Resources, it still seems misguided to delegate this function to them. In the U.S. or Canada, for example, protected natural areas are managed by separate agencies that operate independently of those overseeing resource management. These agencies enjoy a high degree of independence and are less likely to bend to the economic or administrative interests of specific individuals.

— And what about the scientific aspect here, rather than the administrative one?
— We do have some strong examples. The Soviet concept of the economic importance of nature reserves, for instance…You know, long before Reimers and Shtilmark’s book Nature Reserve Management, published in the 1970s, Professor Brodsky of Central Asian University in the 1930s articulated that reserves should be protected not merely to observe something but because they preserve the environment we live in, which in turn makes the economy we depend on possible. At the time, this idea was entirely out of context; yet, in a way, our country was again a pioneer in this thinking.

— That sounds very progressive for the 1930s.
— At that time, it was something completely out of the ordinary. What I wanted to say is that even within this country, there’s a wide range of approaches, and the world as a whole is incredibly diverse. When it comes to administrative decisions, we’re lagging behind many others. Scientifically, though, we’re in decent shape. If we’re talking about protected areas, it probably makes the most sense to compare ourselves with other large countries. For smaller ones, you’ll find some where protected areas make up several dozen percent, with economies often built around tourism, including ecotourism, meaning their protected areas directly support them.
That kind of model is hard to implement in a large country. Take China, for example—they’re implementing massive conservation measures now, but think of the damage done to nature beforehand. In India, it’s a different situation; there are some advanced practices there, but overall, we seem to be doing slightly better. So, we’re somewhere in the middle.

— Viktor Nikolaevich, we started off talking about conservationists in general, but now I’d like to focus on you. How did you get into environmental protection?
— I’m no exception—my journey started with a lot of emotion. I remember back in first grade, when they asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I wrote that I wanted to be a forester. But my idea of a forester’s job was very much at a first-grader’s level—basically, just walking through the forest with a dog.

— It would have been a great job!
— Absolutely! I did write other things, though; forester was just one of them. Then, in second grade, I read about animals driven to extinction by humans, and the story of the passenger pigeon really struck me. That had such a powerful effect that I got interested in biology. I started reading a lot of popular science books, first joined the school gardening club, and then got involved with the Student Science Society at the university.
At that time, Vertebrate Zoology in the Student Science Society was led by Sergey Vitalyevich Bakkа. Back then he had recently graduated from university and was one of the activists of the Nature Protection Volunteer Organization. The Nature Protection Volunteer movement at that time was extremely powerful, encompassing many universities. And it was a self-organizing public initiative that was very active. In the Student Science Society, Sergey Vitalyevich Bakkа explained why conservation was important from a scientific perspective. Under his influence, my interests began to shift from biology to ecology.
The second thing that fascinated me, as it likely did for most kids at the time, was space. And I wanted to somehow combine my interests. I was intrigued by the life-support modules of spacecraft and the creation of local closed biospheres… I started reading about it and realized that it was incredibly complex, and not really feasible. Up until the time I entered university, this was the second direction I could have pursued. Even after I enrolled in the biology faculty, I toyed with the idea.

— But aside from your biology education, you also have a law degree, right? That’s quite an unusual combination.
— My interest in law is something of a family tradition. My father is a lawyer. You could even say he’s a lawyer by God’s grace. He explained many things to me through the lens of jurisprudence as a science. Often, jurisprudence is equated with law or legal norms, but he would explain to me, as a schoolboy, the logic behind how a norm is constructed—it was really fascinating.
I even considered studying law. But even then, I realized that if I pursued that path, I’d likely end up specializing in nature conservation law, or what’s now called environmental law. After school, though, I ultimately chose the biology faculty: I already had some friends there, and I loved the vibe. But yes, later, when I got into environmental protection, I realized that having a legal education was essential.

— Before we finish, I’d like to ask you about your dreams and aspirations. I see you as someone very passionate about their work. What is your dream? What kind of world do you want to live in, and what kind of world are you working toward?
— I can only repeat what we started with. I don’t want to be a professional conservationist; I want to live in a world where we don’t have to protect the environment.
I want to live in a world where people are driven by healthy curiosity and compassion. A world where curiosity leads to scientific knowledge, and where that knowledge, fueled by compassion, is turned into meaningful action.