cities abut the lake, only a few towns 

 with low-five-figure populations, and 

 the only roads of note, along with the 

 Trans-Siberian Railway line, lie along 

 the far southern end. Scarcely 80,000 

 people make their homes along the 1 ,200 

 miles ot shoreline, most in tiny settle- 

 ments accessible only by boat. The only 

 major sources of pollution come from 

 a pulp and paper mill on the southern 

 shore, and from effluent dumped into 

 inflowing rivers by cities and farms in 

 Siberia and Mongolia. At first glance, the 

 world's greatest lake seems an astonish- 

 ingly pristine and untroubled place. 



Peter Thomson, the founding editor 

 and producer of National Public 

 Radio's ecology news show Living On 

 Earth, made his first trip to Baikal in 

 2000. In part, his goal was to find out 

 for himself whether the Edenic char- 

 acter of Baikal was fact or myth. His 

 account of that journey is a hybrid of 



70 natural history November 2007 



Your 



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'ded to"' 



environmental reporting and personal 

 travelogue, the product of a six-month 

 respite Thomson took after his mar- 

 riage ended and his mother died. Casual 

 readers will enjoy his accounts of mean- 

 dering across the Pacific on a container 

 ship with his younger brother, camping 

 among Siberian aspens, and feasting 

 on reindeer meat under the northern 

 lights. But the focal points of his nar- 

 rative are Thomson's vivid encounters 

 with activists, scientists, and residents 

 of the Baikal region. Just how pristine 

 was the lake, he asked them, and how 

 likely was it to remain that way? 



The answer, it turns out, is as murky 

 as Baikal's waters are clear. Baikalian 

 optimists view the lake as a self-clean- 

 ing ecosystem, constantly filtered by 

 tiny shrimplike crustaceans called 

 Epischura baicalensis. According to one 

 local scientist, those zooplankton, 

 endemic to Baikal, "consume every 

 molecule of any substance that comes 



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to its waters," making it impossible to 

 overload the lake with pollutants. Oth- 

 ers, equally eloquent, see glowering 

 clouds on the horizon. They reasonably 

 fear increased development, swelling 

 amounts of effluent from distant cities, 

 insufficient preservation of the national 

 reserves and parklands along Baikal's 

 shore, and the disruption of Baikal's 

 ecosystem by global warming. 



Whether the optimists or the pes- 

 simists are right, they do agree on one 

 thing: the choices made and actions 

 taken in the coming century will 

 determine whether or not Baikal will 

 remain one of Mother Russia's most 

 timeless treasures. 



Lal re\ce A. Marschall, author of The 

 Supernova Story, is W.K.T. Sahm Profes- 

 sor of Physics at Gettysburg College in Penn- 

 sylvania and director of Project CLEA, winch 

 produces widely used simulation software for 

 education in astronomy. 



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