RED DATA BOOK OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND CRIMINAL LAW
The article deals with the international and criminal nature of the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation. The conclusion is made about the significant ecological importance of the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In domestic criminal law, the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation is mentioned seven times: in Part 1 of Art. 226<sup>1</sup> of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (smuggling) and in the footnote to this article; in the title and in two parts of Art. 258<sup>1</sup> (illegal hunting of especially valuable animals); in the title and disposition of Art. 259 (destruction of critical habitats). In all these cases, we are talking about especially valuable wild animals and aquatic biological resources belonging to species listed in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation (Art. 226<sup>1</sup> and Art. 258<sup>1</sup>) or organisms listed in it (Art. 259). The Red Data Book of Russia has an international and criminal nature. More than half a century ago (in 1966) the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources published the first version of its printed work. In the future, it was called the International Red List or the IUCN Red List. The purpose of the article is to analyze the ratio of the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation, as a legal document, and its impact on the practice of applying the criminal law. This problem has been given insufficient attention in the legal literature, it was considered only fragmentarily. In order to achieve this goal, the following methods were used: logical and legal, in the analysis of criminal law and blanket departmental materials; comparative legal, when considering the International Red List and international treaties of the Russian Federation on the protection of wildlife; sociological, when interviewing law enforcement officers and when analyzing generalized materials of judicial and investigative practice that were used in the preparation of Resolutions of the Plenums of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on violations in the field of the environment.