Lake Baikal Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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K nown as the Pearl of Siberia, Lake Baikal is the oldest, largest, and deepest freshwater lake in the world. Some 395 miles long and 50 miles wide, it contains about one-fifth of the fresh water on the globe, more than the five Great Lakes combined. More than 330 rivers and major streams feed it, but the Angara River is the only waterway that flows out of the lake. Because Baikal is very well oxygenated to even its lowest depths, and geographically isolated, it provides a rich ecosystem for an unusual range of animal species, including more than 50 species of fish and large mammals such as bear, moose, elk, deer, and the nerpa seal. Tens of millions of crayfish of several different varieties dispose of most of the natural waste in the lake. One of the clearest lakes in the world, with visibility from the surface to depths of 50 meters or more, the lake is a major tourist site, attracting about two million visitors each year. In addition, there are sites of historical and cultural interest. Olkhon Island, the largest of the lake’s 30 islands, is traditionally identified as the birthplace of Ghengis Khan.

The world-class ski resort and hotels share the lake’s 1300 miles of shoreline with several largescale industrial concerns. Most significantly, the Bakailsk Paper Works empties about 140,000 tons of wastewater into the lake every day. When the plant was constructed in the mid-1960s, Soviet officials emphasized the extensive system of pollution controls built into its design. But when those controls proved inadequate, the pollution provoked what has since been recognized as the beginnings of the Russian environmentalist movement. In 2003, at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the United Nations expedited a $22 million loan to modernize the Paper Works and to significantly reduce its pollution of Lake Baikal while protecting the remote region’s largest employer. The construction of the Irkutsk Dam also created environmental issues on Lake Baikal because it raised the water level of the lake and precipitously reduced the population of some of the smaller fish species, upsetting the entire food chain among the fish in the lake.

The nerpa seal is the only freshwater species of seal and lives only at Lake Baikal. In 1995, the population of nerpa seals at Lake Baikal was estimated at about 100,000. But, in addition to the effects of industrial pollution, economic desperation in the former Soviet Union led to widespread poaching of protected wildlife species, including the nerpa seals. By 2000, the population had been reduced by half, to approximately 50,000. The situation was so serious that, in 2001, the Russian government invited Greenpeace to assist in discouraging poaching during the spring months when female seals are most vulnerable to poachers because they are reluctant to abandon their newborn offspring. Government officials estimated that this intervention reduced the poaching by close to 80 percent.

Lake Baikal features several deep rifts that provide singular opportunities for scientists studying both geological and climate change. In the 1990s, Russian and American scientists collaborated on drilling sediment cores from the Baikal rifts that provided data on about 250,000 years of climate history.

Bibliography:

Bartle Bull, Around the Sacred Sea: Mongolia and Lake Baikal on Horseback (Canongate, 1999);
Valentin A. Koptyug and Martin Uppenbrink, , Sustainable Development of the Lake Baikal Region: A Model Territory for the World (Springer, 1996);
M. Kozhov, Lake Baikal and Its Life (W. Junk, 1963);
M. Kozhova and L.R. Izmesteva, eds., Lake Baikal: Evolution and Biodiversity (Backhuys, 1998);
J. Peterson, Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction (Westview, 1993).