The Medvezhyi Islands Nature Reserve will be created in Yakutia. In late June, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a resolution establishing the nature reserve. 

The new protected area will cover the Kolyma River delta, the tundra landscapes of the Indigirka-Kolyma Lowland and the Medvezhyi Islands archipelago with the adjacent waters of the East Siberian Sea. The total area will exceed 800,000 hectares.

The Medvezhyi Islands have the highest concentration of polar bear maternity dens between the Taimyr Peninsula and Wrangel Island, and in spring, mother bears with cubs come out to the adjacent shore-fast ice. This fact was one of the main arguments in favour of creating a nature reserve in this area.

This nature reserve will help preserve threatened and endangered species of animals and birds and their habitat. This area is home to 27 animal species and 8 plant species that are included in the Russian Red Data Book and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red Data List.

One of the initiators of creating a nature reserve in this area is Viktor Nikiforov, a member of the IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas.  He began working on a project on the Medvezhyi Islands back in 2008.

“Over these years, rangers of the Lower Kolyma Environmental Protection Inspection Department in close cooperation with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Yakutia covered thousands of kilometres on snowmobiles and proved the unique character of this area for preserving polar bear maternity dens. We thank everyone who took part and helped in this work. I hope that the nature reserve will have a good start,” he said.

The new nature reserve will be supervised by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation. The ministry has been instructed to take all necessary steps for opening the nature reserve and to send documents to the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography for registering the borders in the Unified State Register of Immovable Property by February 2021.