Mongolia and Russia to collaborate on protection of snow leopards and bighorns

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The sixth meeting of the Mongolia-Russia joint committee on Cooperation in Environmental Protection took place in Moscow on November 24 and 25. The Mongolian part was led by the state secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Ts.Tsengel, Ambassador of Mongolia to the Russian Federation B.Delgermaa and the Russian part ny Deputy Director of Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage Amirkhan M.Amirkhanov. The sides discussed about conservation and protection of migratory species inhabiting the transboundary areas, cooperation in forestry and development of specially protected areas system, as well as implementation of projects reflected in the Programme on Establishing Economic Corridor between Mongolia, Russia and China, and arranged to take certain measures. The results of researches on the environmental impacts on Baikal lake ecosystem of certain hydropower plant projects, planned to be implemented in Mongolia, were presented. After this, the sides agreed to sum up positions and researches of scholars from both countries while emphasizing an importance of imformation sharing. The commission underlined achievements reached in implementation of the Agreement on Prevention from Forest Fires between the Government of Mongolia and the Government of the Russian Federation, and concerted on the necessity to focus on allowing smooth crossing the state borders for emergency workers, fighting the crossborder forest fires. The sides agreed on renewing the 1995 Cooperation agreement on Forestry. Also, the commission resolved to sign an Intergovernmental agreement on establishing a specially protected crossborder areas of Khuvsgul-Tunkhen and Siilkhem, and to organize a workshop meeting of researchers and specialists on monitoring and control of the transboundary migratory animals, in specific, wild mountain sheep (argali) and snow leopards.