Event overview
Press release:
On 7 October 2026, a Moscow court sentenced Dr Sofia Rosenfeld, a Doctor of Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences and an internationally renowned waterbird specialist, to 3.5 years imprisonment in a penal colony. The charge relates to two automatic donations made to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) of 1000 roubles ($USD 12) debited in August and September 2021. The FBK had been labelled as an extremist organisation and banned in early August 2021. According to Rosenfeld and her defence team, she had no intention of funding a banned organisation.
Rosenfeld is Russia’s leading expert on Arctic waterbirds. As such, she has actively campaigned against a bill that would weaken the ban on the killing of Red Listed (protected) animals in Russia. She was also one of the key experts involved in developing the Russian Federation’s Red Data Book (previous edition). Her work provides Russia’s only reliable population estimates of waterbirds, making it critical for any sustainable natural resources management, including hunting. Her estimates also contributed to restoring access of indigenous peoples in the Arctic to traditional hunting resources.
Rosenfeld is widely internationally connected through her work on migratory waterbirds and saw her involved in numerous scientific cooperation projects. Her work is critical to the conservation of species migrating along several flyways, the annual migratory pathways of billions of birds. Because Russia is the breeding ground for many of these species, Rosenfeld’s work is of vital importance for conservation of these shared species across Asia, Oceania, Africa, and Europe.
These flyways include:
- Central Asian Flyway (CAF), which spans from the Russian Arctic to India. In her various roles she supported research and conservation of the Bar-headed Goose, a symbolic species of the CAF that spends its non-breeding period in India and breeds in Central Asia. The Indian government recently led the Initiative for Central Asian Flyway, which was adopted by all the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS).
- African-Eurasian Flyway, which spans from the Russian Arctic, across Europe, to Southern Africa and is home to 36 species threatened with extinction, including the Common Pochard, Lesser White-fronted Goose, and Red-breasted Goose.
- East Asian-Australasian Flyway, which spans from the Russian Arctic to Australia and New Zealand and is home to 55 species threatened with extinction, including the Endangered Great Knot and Endangered Far Eastern Curlew, regular visitors to Australia and New Zealand.
Rosenfeld is currently leading a project on understanding the flight routes of goose species, including the Bar-headed Goose, that migrate between northern Russia and Central and Eastern Asia. This research provides key information for understanding how zoonotic diseases, such as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), may spread along the flyway. Moreover, the research aims to understand how zoonotic diseases may spread between two distinct flyways, with the potential to rapidly bring disease to other bird populations that then migrate as far as India, Australia and New Zealand.
Rosenfeld regularly provided expertise to various international processes, including the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) and its European Goose Management Platform, that sits in the framework of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). CMS is a UN-administered multilateral environmental agreement to which 133 countries are Party, including Australia, New Zealand, and India.
Rosenfeld is also the Russia focal point for the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) Anatidae Working Group, a member of the IUCN SSC Goose Specialist Group, and the Coordinator of the Central Asian Conservation Network (CACN) Goose Working Group.
More information:
https://zona.media/news/2026/10/07/rozenfeld
https://www.savesofia.ru/