Published on: 2026-11-05
Source: Preserved Embassy Foundation – Фонд Заповедное посольство –
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At the COP17 held in Yerevan — the first global review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework — the Presidential Nature Fund held a session titled “Digital Solutions for Nature Conservation.” The moderator was Ekaterina Yemets, the foundation’s program director. The session featured Alexander Zheleznyak, the director of digital products at the “Protected Embassy” Foundation: he spoke about the mobile platform for protected areas — the “Green Button” application.
Opening the event, Ekaterina Yemets noted that Russia is currently implementing advanced digital solutions and we definitely have something to share with partners from other countries. The session discussed how to replicate practices — on the unified platform ‘Digital Solutions for Nature Conservation,’ which is being developed by the Presidential Nature Fund — and to other countries.
Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation Dmitry Tetenkin noted that digital technologies are becoming a powerful tool for nature conservation: they allow the collection and analysis of large data sets, prompt response to threats, and increased efficiency in conservation activities. In April 2026, the Ministry of Natural Resources developed a program for robotization and automation in the field of natural resource use with a horizon up to 2036 and submitted it to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. It covers nine areas: from ecosystem monitoring to fire fighting, unmanned and underwater vehicles.
Alexander Zheleznyak, The director of digital products at the Zapovednoe Posolstvo Foundation presented the “Green Button” service for managing specially protected natural territories (SPNT). Kamchatka was the pilot region for it: the “Green Button” has been operating there for three years, connecting all regional SPNTs. Then national parks Smolenskoye Poozerye, Ugra, Krasnoyarskie Stolby, and Shushensky Bor, the Belukha Nature Park in the Altai Republic, and regional SPNTs of Vladimir Region joined the platform. The application provides tourists with maps, routes, navigation, and territory boundaries in a unified format; the map can be downloaded and used offline; protected zones with restricted access are marked separately. The permit for visiting is obtained online: for users with a personal account, it takes about 30 seconds, after which they receive a QR code, which the inspector scans on site and instantly sees the guest’s data. In an emergency, the application sends the coordinates to the 112 service with one action. Last year, 33 thousand electronic permits were obtained through the “Green Button” — on Kamchatka this accounts for more than 50% of tourists visiting the protected natural territories.”Our niche is in demand: the application not only informs tourists but also solves problems for protected area staff. By the end of the year, with the support of the Presidential Nature Fund, we plan to connect another ten protected areas from different regions of the country,” the speaker emphasized.
Anna Lemyakina, The director of national strategic projects at Yandex presented the projects of the non-profit center Technologies for Society by Yandex Cloud. Each project is based on a scientific hypothesis formulated by researchers, with the results made publicly available. The snow leopard monitoring system is used in more than five countries and recognizes individual animals by their unique spot patterns; a neural network trained to identify Baikal phytoplankton reduces water sample analysis from several days to a few hours; another neural network in the “Clean Shore” project, already tested in more than ten protected areas, classifies coastal litter, estimates its weight and volume, and calculates how many volunteers are needed for cleanup, thereby speeding up coastline cleaning by several times. All models are open — including the Sosnowski’s Hogweed detector with 92.3% accuracy, which has been adopted by the Tver, Krasnodar, and Nizhny Novgorod regions.
Svetlana Sheinfeld, The director of the Group for Operational Risk Management and Sustainability Services at Kept presented the transition of corporate biodiversity monitoring from one-time reports to continuous data collection. The speaker emphasized: what is not in the numbers will not exist. Companies need not just data, but a data architecture on biodiversity — necessarily with expert verification of artificial intelligence results.
Leonid Belov, an advisor to the general director of JSC Severstal Management spoke about the experience of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant: in accordance with Article 50.1 of the Environmental Protection Act, landowners are obliged to destroy hazardous invasive species. Geobotanical surveys identified 17 aggressive species — from Sosnowsky’s hogweed to Canadian elodea; now the company is implementing a photo documentation application where any employee can send a photo of a plant.
Natalia Trofimova, The director of the autonomous non-profit organization “Nature and People: Digital Solutions” spoke about the “Thermotpoints in Protected Natural Areas” service: the time from detecting a thermopoint to notifying the duty personnel has been reduced from four hours to 40 minutes, 176 protected natural areas are connected to the service, and up to 80% of fires in federal territories are detected within the first 24 hours. “We didn’t create a button that, when pressed, can extinguish a fire,” she concluded. “But we created a button that allows you to learn that a fire has started in 40 minutes instead of 4 hours.”
Dmitry Chernyaev, The Director of Operations of the Presidential Nature Fund revealed the principle of applying AI in grant evaluation: the language model analyzes the application in 30 seconds and forms preliminary assessments, while the final conclusions are made by experts. “AI is the letter of the law, and the experts give us the spirit of the law,” added Ekaterina Yemets. In total, the fund received 3,792 applications, including for the ongoing third competition; following the two completed competitions, 321 projects were supported with almost 2 billion rubles. On September 1, the third competition started with a fund of 1 billion rubles.
Lyubov Timofeeva, a project manager for nature-based solutions at the Regional Office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for Eastern Europe and Central Asia talked about the union’s standards — the Red List of species, the Green List of protected areas, the Red List of ecosystems — and invited the Russian audience to a new network of scientific and technical cooperation: the IUCN center in Tashkent will work with countries in the region, including Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and five Central Asian countries. “I urge everyone to share scientific and technical knowledge and participate in the activities of this center,” she emphasized.
Alexey Zavarzin, The director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Agrobiotechnology at ITMO University, a member of the IUCN Education and Communications Commission, presented the “BIOM” project: schoolchildren grow rare endangered plants and collect data for digital species models. The pilot covers 300 schools in the Nizhny Novgorod and Tver regions with plans to scale up to ten more regions.
He concluded the program with a report Anton Yurmanov, the vice-rector of the Murmansk Arctic University, about recoverable stratospheric platforms for environmental monitoring — a field that complements satellite and drone observations.
The participants agreed that the next stage is integration: a unified platform of digital services, standardized data protocols, and legal formalization of rights to data collected with the involvement of businesses, scientists, and volunteers.
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