Russia’s national gas utility Gazprom will spend a total of 80 million roubles to sponsor nature-protection measures during the construction of Olympic facilities in the mountainous areas near Sochi, head of Gazprom’s department for special projects and research Matvei Geller said on Wednesday.

According to Geller, as many as 10,000 plants that are on the Red List of Threatened Species will be re-planted from the Psekhako ridge near the Krasnaya Polyana, a site of the would-be skiing and biathlon complex. Moreover, about 1,000 animals, mostly amphibia, will be moved to other habitats.

In the past two years, Gazprom as an investor company has carried out about 150 environment-protection actions, having re-settled 500 animals and re-planted 6,000 Red Book plants, he said. On Wednesday, the company carried out quite another such action. It planted feeding racks with salt on the territory of the Caucasian Biosphere Reserve. “We are helping the reserve to organize migration routes for wild animals and carry out other measures aimed to protect this picturesque piece of southern Russia located just a stone’s throw from the Olympic facilities under construction,” Geller noted.

The Olympic facilities were designed compactly in order to reduce the burden on nature. “Instead of two stadiums, a skiing and a biathlon ones, we are building a single skiing and biathlon complex with a common infrastructure, access roads, and engineering networks. The project has helped to save large areas of wild nature,” he stressed.

Bulgaria Wants EU to Keep Financial Framework for Agriculture Unchanged in 2014-2020
SOFIA, November 8. (BTA). Bulgaria is among the countries insisting on preserving the financial framework of the common EU agricultural policy in the next programme period from 2014 to 2020, the country's Agriculture and Food Minister Miroslav Naydenov told Bulgarian journalists in Brussels on Monday. He attended a meeting at the European Parliament (EP) which considered legislative proposals by the European Commission for reforming the common agricultural policy.