And the organisations supporting NGOs are generally all in Moscow and not always accessible for NGOs in the regions. There were several explanations for this state of affairs. Very few large ones are in Central Russia or Central Siberia, reflecting roughly the demographic profile and to some extent the environmental problems. But they don't want to fly Aeroflot and they often don't speak Russian. One exception, however, is the Kamchatka peninsula, with its geysers and active volcanoes, where Western agencies are said to trip over one other, astonished to find each other there.
Some topics are very fashionable.
Other areas experienced overlap, if not complete duplication, owing to the number of different foreign agencies in the field. This has been noted in North West Russia, the heavily polluted town of Nizhny Tagil in the Urals, and, perhaps above all, in the Baikal region and the tiger habitat of the Russian Far East. The Baikal region and the Siberian tiger have almost certainly attracted more foreign interest than any other environmental cause in Russia. Baikal is a victim of its own success. In the Primorsky krai in the Russian Far East, five foreign donors found that they were funding the same tiger patrol team.