The laboratory was formed on October 20, 2006, merging the Group for Ecological Foundations of Ecosystem Protection and Animal Population Management (established in 1980, headed by Academician of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Prof. E.E. Syroechkovsky), the Group for Ecoinformation Systems and Space Monitoring (1988, Prof. G.I. Belchansky), and the Laboratory of Landscape Ecology of Mammals (1993, Cand. Sci. (Geogr.) V.M. Neronov). In 2015, the Group for Ecoinformation Systems and Space Monitoring was separated into an independent unit of the Institute.