The first edition of The Red Book of Murmansk Region was made in accordance with the lists of rare and endangered species of Murmansk Region (1979, 1990). At that time the system of conservations categories was in the process of making and the experts used the regular criteria.

Though the international system of conservation categories was intensively developing, in Russia there was its own system. This system was the foundation of the first edition of The Red Book of Murmansk Region. A new category (5, special conservation status) for rare species was added. This category is for species in the Red Book of Russia that are of least concern in a region.

The most curious, difficult and big task was to take part in the production of the second edition of the Red Data Book of the Murmansk Region.

The Science and Research Department of Pasvik Nature Reserve coordinated some parts of work on the red list. We got together scientists from different institutions and nature reserves who worked on the red list production. It lasted for five years from 2010 to 2014.

At the very beginning we coordinated planning. We also revised regional conservation categories structure in accordance with international criteria. The result was submitted for consideration to The Regional Commission on Rare and Endangered Animal and Plant Species. Later we supervised the making of texts, maps and illustrations for units "Animals", "Fungi" and "Algae".

Two of our colleagues became editors of the second edition:

• A. Makarova as an executive editor (chief scientist of the nature reserve, Ph.D. in Biology and Honored environmentalist of Russia).
  
• N. Polikarpova as layout editor and supervisor (Deputy Director for Science and Research and Ph.D. in Geography).

In 2015−2016 we started research on birds migration paths by ringing them. The research was conducted in Pasvik Nature Reserve in Russia and Norwegian nature reserve of the same name as a part of cooperation in the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park. While ringing birds we also registered some rare and endangered species, shared reports, added new species on the list of rare ones and wrote popular science texts about the biodiversity in the Pasvik River Valley including those about populations of rare and endangered species.

The work of nature reserves on the conservation of rare species and research on them is extremely important. But the participation of researchers from nature reserves in the general process of producing red lists is no less important. This is about not only regional and country lists but also international ones.

This makes it all the more urgent to create Red Data Books of adjacent, transboundary territories, including the Pasvik-Inari Region (Rare species …, 2016). Such work allows a more accurate approach to determining the level of species vulnerability, which is already a tool for taking measures for their conservation.