Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed a resolution establishing the Medvezhyi Islands (Bear Islands) Nature Reserve in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

The new protected area covers over 800,000 hectares and includes the Kolyma delta, tundra areas of the Indigirka-Kolyma Lowland and the Medvezhyi Islands archipelago with the surrounding waters of the East Siberian Sea.

The new nature reserve will help preserve the habitat of 27 wild animal and eight plant species in the Russian Red Data Book and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, such as polar bears, Siberian white cranes, demoiselle cranes, Pacific brent geese, Ross's gulls, spectacled eiders and sandhill cranes.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has been instructed to take the necessary steps to establish the new protected area and send the requisite documents to the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography before February 1, 2021 to register the reserve boundaries in the Single State Register of Immovable Property.