Vodlozersky National Park (Vodlozersky Biosphere
Reserve) is partially located in Karelia, partly in the Karelia and
Arkhangelsk region. It is the largest national park in Europe.
Vodlozersky National Park stretches 150 kilometers from south to
north and tens of kilometers from west to east. Located in the basin
of Lake Vodlozero and the river Ileksa. It occupies 130 thousand
hectares in Eastern Karelia and 298 thousand hectares in the
north-west of the Arkhangelsk region.
The territory of the
park is divided into three forest areas:
Vodlozerskoye
forestry - the center of the village of Kuganavolok (Vodlozersky
branch of the park), Karelia
Pudozhskoe staircase - the village
of Valdai, Karelia
Ilekskoe staircase - the town of Onega (Onega
branch of the park), Arkhangelsk region
The park administration
is located in Petrozavodsk.
Vodlozerye
Vodlozerye is the oldest cultural region
of the Russian North. The region was inhabited by humans about 8-9
thousand years ago. On its territory there are many archaeological
sites, including the Mesolithic and Neolithic times.
The Sami and
Finnish tribes were replaced by Slavic tribes in the 10th-11th
centuries, after which the region became part of the Obonezh Pyatina of
the Novgorod land. After the fall of Veliky Novgorod in the 15th
century, the region turned out to be a “bearish corner”. In the
XVII-XVIII centuries, the Old Believers rushed here from persecution.
Here, in the Kozhozero Monastery, the future Patriarch Nikon lived for a
long time. 13 ancient chapels have been preserved. There were also
villages (boyarshchinas) that belonged to the Novgorod boyar Marfa
Boretskaya (known as "Martha the Posadnitsa").
At the beginning
of the 20th century, there were 40 villages in Vodlozero with a
population of 2628 people. As of 2005, there were five settlements on
the territory of the Vodlozersky Park, where 547 people lived.
National park
The national park was created by the decision of the
government of the Russian Federation in April 1991 to preserve the
natural complex in the basin of Lake Vodlozero and the Ileksa River. The
site zapoved.ru claims that the area of untouched forests in the park
exceeds the area of all forests in Western Europe combined.
In
2001, by decision of UNESCO, the park was given the status of a
biosphere reserve, the first in the system of national parks in Russia.
Park administration
The directorate and administrative center of
the national park are located in Petrozavodsk. The administration of the
Vodlozero branch is located in the village of Kuganavolok of the
Republic of Karelia, and the administration of the Onega branch is
located in the city of Onega.
The territory of the park is
divided into three forest areas:
Vodlozerskoye - the center in
the village of Kuganavolok
Ilekskoye - the center in the city of
Onega
Pudozhskoye - the center in the village of Valdai
Development
In Vodlozersky Park, for the first time in Russia, a
master plan and a business plan for the development of ecotourism were
developed, and international principles of ecotourism were put into
practice[8]. For more than ten years, a program for training guides for
work in the wild has been successfully operating, which was implemented
jointly with the Kuru Forest Department at Tampere College (Finland).
Research is being carried out in three areas:
Study and
conservation of the biodiversity of ecosystems, flora and fauna of the
Vodlozero National Park as a standard of natural taiga landscapes of the
European North-West of Russia;
Past and present of the population of
Vodlozero and Poileksye;
Saints and shrines of the Russian North:
Poonezhye, Kargopolye, Vodlozerye, Zaonezhye.