Since Putin Came to Power, Russian Forests East of Urals have Declined in Net Size by Area Equal in Size in Lithuania

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 12 – Satellite photography assembled by Global Forest Change and Global Forest Watch show that since 2000, the year Putin came to power, the area of forests in the Russian Federation has suffered a net decline of 68,000 square kilometers or 1.2 percent, slightly larger than the total area of Lithuania.

            Overwhelmingly, this decline reflects a growing number of wildfires that the Russian authorities lack the capacity to fight rather than logging, the People of Baikal portal says, adding that efforts at reforestation have been scattered and small rather than systematic and large (baikal-stories.media/2025/11/12/lesnoj-razbor/).

            The situation in Eastern Siberia is “the worst of all,” the portal says, with the Sakha Republic hit especially hard. That federal subject has suffered more than half of all net losses of forests in regions east of the Urals. The republic has lost 35,000 square kilometers, more than half of all the losses in this region and equal in size to the area of Mongolia.

            Summing up, the portal paints a horrific picture. “In 2000, forests covered 5,900,000 square kilometers of Siberia and the Far East, an area almost the size of Australia. Over the next 25 years, it lost 820,000 square kilometers or 13 percent. Three quarters of  this loss came from fires; the rest from cuttings.”

            “Is this a lot or a little?” People of Baikal asks rhetorically. And it answers: “ask the Australians how they would react to news that over the last 25 years, their favorite land had disappeared from world maps.”