National parks of Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Russia's national parks exist because of a trip to Yellowstone. In 1961, Innokenti Gerasimov led a delegation of Soviet geographers to the United States. Gerasimov was director of the Institute of Geography at the USSR Academy of Sciences. The group also visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At home, the Soviet system offered two types of protected land. Zapovedniks were strict nature reserves, largely closed to the public. Zakazniks were partial reserves, typically managed for a single species or habitat. Neither was designed to welcome an ordinary visitor. What Gerasimov and his colleagues encountered in America was something the Soviet Union had never built. It was wilderness that remained openly accessible and still worth protecting. How a state built on centralized control came to adopt that idea is a question worth following. The answer involves a newspaper editorial, a sand spit shared with Lithuania, and a mountain no one in Europe stands higher than.

• 2. Making the Case

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  In 1966, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published a joint article by Innokenti Gerasimov and Vladimir Preobrazhensky. The two geographers made a public argument for building a national park system across the Soviet Union. Gerasimov had already advanced the idea by 1965, proposing a nature park centered on Lake Baikal. A second proposal was drawn up for the Lake Seliger area in the Valdai Hills.

  Gerasimov and Preobrazhensky were careful to distinguish their proposal from a simple recreational destination. Visitors would be welcome in designated areas, but the deeper interior of each park would be off-limits without a guide. Animals and plants in those inner areas would receive stricter protection than visitors in the outer zones could enjoy. Tourism and preservation would share the same boundary, each in its assigned space.

  The first parks to open were Sochinsky and Losiny Ostrov, both in 1983. Samarskaya Luka followed in 1984, and Mariy Chodra in 1985. Four more, Bashkiriya, Prielbrusye, Pribaykalsky, and Zabaykalsky, opened in 1986. Losiny Ostrov, whose name translates as Moose Island, sits inside Moscow. It ranks as the third largest forest within a major city. The parks ranked above it are Table Mountain National Park in Cape Town and Pedra Branca State Park in Rio de Janeiro.

• 3. A Land Divided

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  Russian law defines national parks as areas of land and water devoted simultaneously to nature protection, ecological education, and scientific research. They contain sites of particular ecological, historical, and aesthetic value. Regulated tourism is permitted within that framework.

  Russia's protected-areas law requires each park to contain a strictly protected inner zone. That zone operates like a zapovednik, with tightly controlled access and no development. Around it sit recreational areas for visitors, and buffer zones where limited economic activity is permitted. Tourism, traditional land use, and careful forms of agriculture and forestry all qualify in the outer layers.

  Barguzin Zapovednik adjoins Zabaykalsky National Park on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. The two areas hold separate legal designations but share a common conservation purpose. That arrangement allows them together to cover a wider spectrum of protection than either could achieve alone.

  Vodlozersky National Park was the first to earn UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status, in 2001. Smolenskoye Poozerye and Ugra followed in 2002, with Valdaysky and Kenozersky added in 2004. Kenozersky gained a second distinction in 2024, when it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Oversight of all Russia's national parks rests with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

• 4. Animals on the Edge

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  In the forests of Russia's far southeastern corner, about 50 Amur leopards remain in the wild. Land of the Leopard National Park, in Primorsky Krai, was created specifically to protect them. More than half of all Amur leopards in Russia now live within its 80,000 hectares.

  Zov Tigra, whose name translates as Tiger's Call, protects a mountainous refuge for the Amur tiger in Primorsky Krai. Udegeyskaya Legenda, another park in the same region, also shelters the species. Bikin National Park was established on the 3rd of November 2015. It guards the habitat of 10 percent of all Amur tigers in the wild. It encompasses the largest remaining old-growth mixed forest in the Northern Hemisphere.

  Kytalyk National Park, on the tundra of the Indigirka River delta, protects a very different kind of animal. The critically endangered Siberian crane breeds on that low-lying coastal tundra along the East Siberian Sea. Kytalyk holds a significant portion of the breeding sites used by cranes on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The park's name, kytalyk, is the Yakut-language word for the Siberian crane.

  Saylyugemsky National Park was created as a dedicated preserve for two rare animals: the Altai Snow Leopard and the argali, or Altai mountain sheep. It sits on the border between Russia and Mongolia. The Shantar Islands, a group of 15 islands in the Sea of Okhotsk, support a different mix of marine species. Steller Sea Lions, seals, and Bowhead whales all inhabit the surrounding waters. The highest point on any of those islands reaches 720 metres above the sea.

• 5. Edges of the World

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  Prielbrusye National Park is centered on Mount Elbrus, which rises 5,632 metres above sea level. No peak in Europe stands higher. The gorges surrounding the mountain are so steep and isolated that the park has developed unusually high levels of endemism. Species found nowhere else have evolved within these closed corridors of the central Caucasus.

  Beringia National Park covers more than 3 million hectares of Chukotka, Russia's far northeastern peninsula. Until approximately 11,000 BCE, a land bridge connected Asia and North America where the Bering Strait now runs. Early humans used that corridor to move between the two continents. Russia's Beringia protects the Asian side of that now-submerged passage. The corresponding American protected area, the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska, occupies the eastern end.

  The Curonian Spit stretches 98 kilometres along the Baltic Sea coast, separating the Curonian Lagoon from the open sea. Its southern portion lies within Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast; the northern end crosses into Lithuania. The two countries jointly hold the spit as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  Buzuluksky Bor National Park protects what scientists identify as the largest isolated grove of high pine trees anywhere in the world. The park stands surrounded entirely by open steppe, on the Eastern Russian Plain between the Volga River and the southern Ural Mountains. Its sandy soils are the remnants of an ancient river delta that once flowed into the Caspian Sea. A different kind of pressure affects the park today: oil has been found underneath it.

  Kislovodsk National Park covers 966 hectares, stretching from the city center of Kislovodsk into the slopes of the Dzhinal Ridge. The park supports mineral springs, hiking paths, and a cable car that carries visitors to the top of the ridge. That relatively modest area holds the designation of the largest urban park in Europe.

  About 500 kilometres northeast of Lake Baikal lies Kodar National Park. Its terrain takes in precipitous alpine slopes, more than 570 alpine lakes, and low-altitude glaciers. The park also contains volcanoes and an isolated small desert surrounded by taiga. In the Evenks language, the word kodar means steep.

• 6. Peoples and Their Lands

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  Alkhanay National Park, in Zabaykalsky Krai, is centered on Mount Alkhanai, which the Buryat people hold as sacred. Modern Buddhists share that reverence. The Dalai Lama has made two unofficial visits to the mountain.

  Six hundred people remain in the Bikin River basin, belonging to two indigenous groups: the Udeghe and the Nanai. Their culture of fishing and hunting in the forest shaped the valley long before the park existed. When Bikin was designated, its mission included protecting that living culture alongside the forest itself.

  Kalevalsky National Park, in the Republic of Karelia, sits on the border between Russia and Finland. Its name comes from the Kalevala, an epic poem of Finnish and Karelian oral folklore. The landscape the park protects is the same territory from which those stories were drawn. Its forests rank among the last large old-growth boreal pine groves in Europe.

  Kenozersky National Park in Arkhangelsk Oblast preserves many cultural monuments. Among them is the Porzhensky Pogost, a complex built around St. George church and its bell-tower, both from the 18th century. The wooden wall surrounding the complex, with its gates and towers, was built in 1789.

  Alaniya National Park lies on the north slope of the central Caucasus, in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. The republic takes its name from the medieval Alan people, whose ruins dot the park alongside older remains from the Bronze Age Koban culture. The park also contains the Karaugom Glacier, which extends 13 kilometres through the mountain terrain.

  Mariy Chodra National Park, in the Mari El Republic, was established partly to protect the region's rare plants. More than 115 rare plant species have been recorded within its boundaries. Among the park's most visited landmarks is a single old tree, known as Pugachov's Oak.