Posts: 19986
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:42 pm
That the government has been able to bring back the Aral Sea is truly amazing, considering it was nothing but a toxic, salty sludge. Lake Baikal, which is in Siberia, is the world's oldest lake and holds 20 per cent of the world's surface freshwater, was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. In April, 1987 the Soviet government issued a comprehensive decree protecting Lake Baikal. Among other things, it abolished logging anywhere close to the lake shore and decreed that a cellulose plant be "re profiled" for activities harmless to the environment by 1993.