NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that environmentalists in Russia are going to court over Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's restructuring of the country's environmental protection system. Activists fear that the new system is really a cover for a plan to open up long protected nature reserves to commercial usage, to bring in badly needed cash to the central overnment. Kelemen visited a reserve in southern Siberia where rangers are worried about their future and the protection of the reserve.
Copyright 2000 NPR