INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Wilderness as Nature Conservation Indicator for Regional Policy Making in Russia by VLADIMIR BOCHARNIKOV and EVSEY KOSMAN
PEER REVIEWED
ABSTRACT Wilderness has etymologically multiple meanings that results in a wide variety of corresponding approaches for study and interpretations. In this research, pieces of wild nature were considered as spatial units of terrestrial wilderness. Areas of wilderness were evaluated using GIS-based technologies within 45 Russian regions, where territories of wild nature still exist. Three wilderness-related traits were estimated for each federal subject: proportion of wilderness areas, proportion of protected areas, and proportion of protected wilderness. Then structural relationships between the subjects and variability among them were analyzed using standard and recently developed tools of community ecology (metrics of functional trait dispersion and singularity) to establish groups of closely related regions and evaluate specificity (singularity) of each region. Such classification of wilderness status in different regions is a highly important issue for policy makers to clearly determine objectives of nature protection, to shape proper feasible ways of reaching those objectives, and to efficiently manage sites of biodiversity conservation. New tools of wilderness data analysis used in this study can facilitate development of problem-oriented solutions of nature preservation. Specially protected territories are a traditional and highly effective form of nature and environment preservation in Russia. However, the internationally accepted ‘wilderness’ category should also be put into official use in Russia to form a legislative basis for preserving large territories in Siberia, the Far East and Arctic, and still existing patches of wild nature in other regions, mainly in the European part of Russia.
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International Journal of Wilderness | August 2021 | Volume 27, Number 2
Vladimir Bocharnikov
Evsey Kosman
