Russia’s ‘Red Book’ exists to keep rare species alive. After September 1, builders who claim ‘no other site available’ get a legal green light to wipe one out.

The independent Russian data project “To Be Precise” has published an article explaining how Russia’s “Red Book” is compiled, why it exists, and why it periodically touches off scandals. We’re retelling it here, with a few examples and details of our own.

Why the Red Book exists

The Red Book is a list of animals, plants, and fungi whose survival is in doubt. Russia has regional Red Books in addition to the national one. The International Union for Conservation of Nature also maintains a global Red List.

Under Russian law, the state is obligated to protect the species on the national list. Killing, storing, transporting, collecting, keeping, acquiring, or selling a listed animal or plant — or destroying its habitat — carries a fine of up to 5,000 rubles for individuals and up to 1 million rubles for companies and organizations. Russia’s Criminal Code sets out punishments for anyone who:

• destroys habitat that is critical to organisms listed in the Red Book (Article 259);
• destroys, damages, collects, stores, sells, buys, transports, or ships “especially valuable” plants and fungi (Article 260.1);
• kills, keeps in captivity, buys, stores, transports, ships, or sells “especially valuable” mammals, fish, and birds, or their parts (Article 258.1).

Some offenders have been given prison terms rather than suspended sentences: in one case for killing an Amur tiger, in another for selling a tiger carcass.

Who decides what goes in the Red Book

Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry maintains the Red Book and makes the final decision on whether to add a species, refuse to add it, or remove it. The ministry acts on recommendations from the Commission on Rare and Endangered Animals, Plants, and Fungi, which accepts proposals both from scientific institutions and from ordinary members of the public.

The fiercest disputes over what to add and what to drop involve species prized by trophy hunters. Hunters argue that listing a species does nothing on its own to rebuild its population, whereas breeding it on game preserves, where people pay to shoot, does help.

Tatyana Aramileva is probably the loudest voice in that camp. She spent years heading the Russian Hunters and Anglers Union before the Natural Resources Ministry appointed her to head its department for wildlife protection and hunting policy. In 2025, responsibility for the Red Book passed to that department, setting off a major scandal. Oversight ultimately returned to the ministry’s department for specially protected natural areas.

Sometimes Red Book animals cause problems for people, and that can sway the commission. The Volga-Ural population of saiga antelope, for instance, was removed from the book because the animals trample fields and eat crops.

As “To Be Precise” notes, the removal of certain invertebrates — mollusks or annelid worms, for example — may have less to do with their numbers growing than with scientists getting better at finding them.

Which animals are most at risk

The latest edition of Russia’s Red Book of Animals came out in 2020; the edition for plants and fungi followed in 2023. The book now lists 443 animal species, 152 of them added for the first time. A further 122 species were dropped from the previous edition. Half of the new entries are invertebrates and half are vertebrates, mostly birds and reptiles.

Russia’s Red Book classifies animals by rarity into five categories:

• Probably extinct
• Endangered
• Declining in number and/or range, a category accounting for about half of listed species
• Rare
• Status undetermined

Russia currently counts 11 species as probably extinct. The category covers species not seen in their known habitat for a long time — 100 years for invertebrates, 50 years for vertebrates. “The dhole, or Asiatic wild dog, used to be found in southern Siberia and the Far East, but its presence in Russia hasn’t been confirmed for several decades,” the authors of “To Be Precise” write. “Some reported sightings were probably mistaken; the animals were being confused with reddish-coated gray wolves. No one knows for certain why the species disappeared. Scientists point to the use of poison, a decline in hoofed-animal populations, disease, and competition with the gray wolf. The striped hyena met a similar fate: it once lived in southern Dagestan but was last seen there in 1953. Like the dhole, the hyena suffered from a shrinking food supply and from poisoning.”

Animals that have died out altogether are not listed in the Red Book. Over the past 400 years, nine species and subspecies have disappeared from Russian territory, among them the aurochs, the steppe tarpan, and Steller’s sea cow.

What can be done to save these animals

The Red Book also sorts animals, plants, and fungi into a second set of categories that describe how a species is faring in the wild:

• extinct in the wild;
• extinct in the Russian Federation;
• critically endangered;
• endangered;
• vulnerable;
• near threatened;
• of least concern.

And it groups them by the kind of help their populations need:

• immediate protective measures, plus a conservation strategy that is drawn up and carried out;
• one or more specific measures to save the species;
• nothing beyond the measures already in place (the work of nature reserves, for example).

When more drastic action is needed, one option is captive breeding followed by release into the wild, the approach used with Przewalski’s horses.

Since the previous edition of the Red Book, conditions have improved for 19 percent of the animals listed, enough to move them into a different category. The authors of “To Be Precise” offer this example:

How the rules on Red Book animals, plants, and fungi change in 2026

”Rules allowing the taking of Red Book species in exceptional cases, including for monitoring population status, had been in force since 1997,” the authors of “To Be Precise” write. “But the 2009 law on hunting directly prohibited this, creating a legal contradiction.” Amendments passed at the end of 2020 lifted that ban. New rules on the taking of Red Book species were issued in 2026 and take effect on September 1.

The list of justifications for killing Red Book animals or destroying Red Book plants and fungi has grown considerably. It now covers not only “monitoring population status” but also, for example, “the construction and reconstruction of facilities of federal and regional significance, … as well as facilities provided for under the investment agreements of Russian regions” — provided there is nowhere else to put the project. The change opens major opportunities for developers and mining companies.

“Instead of preserving Red Book species in their natural habitat, the state is proposing a procedure for removing them from the land slated for development,” the Russian environmental outlet Kedr writes. “This is especially dangerous for plants and fungi. They cannot be protected simply by ‘collecting’ or ‘transplanting’ them: many species depend on specific soil, hydrological conditions, mycorrhizal fungi, neighboring species, and the wider ecosystem. Destroying a habitat often means destroying the species itself in that area.”