Russia contains an extraordinary range of ecosystems: Arctic coastlines, boreal forests, steppe grasslands, mountain belts, wetlands, major river basins, and freshwater systems dominated in the global imagination by Lake Baikal.
Scale is both an advantage and a problem. Vast protected areas exist, but so do pollution legacies, wildfire risk, infrastructure pressure, extractive industries, and climate-related thaw across permafrost regions. Nature in Russia is inseparable from resource politics.