Abstract: In this article the authors present statistical data about the number of registered environmental crimes in the Russian Federation including in the Siberian Federal Okrug and Krasnoyarsky Krai and prove that environmental crime is quite a common phenomenon. The authors reveal issues of the harmful influence of this type of crime on the integrity of the ecosystem as well as other spheres of human activity. The authors carry out a detailed analysis of the nature and degree of the social danger that may be caused by this type of crime, for example, illegal logging. They analyze a set of planned legislative measures aimed at enforcing the criminal liability for envirommental crime. In the course of their research the authors have used such methods as the dialectical materialistic research method, and special research methods such as formal law, comparative law, structured system, criminological and linguistic analysis. They offer their own legislative measures that would raise criminal liablity for environmental crime. The authors underline that their measures will raise efficiency of the counteraction of enviromental crime and conclude that criminal sanctions for environmental crimes should be efficient, coherent and play a deterrent role. They should also correspond to the nature and degree of the social danger that may be caused by environmental crimes.