For two years now, the number of visitors to special protected natural areas in Russia is showing a considerable growth. According to the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, since 2018, there has been a steady growth of the visitors by almost 15 percent year-on-year. In 2019, the number of visitors to Russian national parks and reserves exceeded the estimated intermediate indicator and amounted to more than 8 million people.
As EcoTourism Expert came to know, the federal project "Conservation of Biological Diversity and the Development of Ecological Tourism" of the national project "Ecology" expects to see the increase of visitors to federal protected areas to 10.3 million people by 2024.
Most tourists travel to Kislovodsky National Park, located in the Stavropol Territory. In 2018, it was visited by 1,389 thousand people, and in 2019 - more than 1.5 million people. It is followed in the top five by the Sochi National Park located in the Krasnodar Territory. In 2018, almost 1,870 thousand people visited it, and in 2019 it received more than 1,200 thousand visitors. In addition, the Ministry noted the Krasnoyarsk Pillars National Park (the Krasnoyarsk Territory) (2018 - 754,220 people; 2019 - 1,131,005 people), Curonian Spit (the Kaliningrad Region) (2018 - 471,660 people; 2019 - 589,044 people) and the Russian North (the Vologda Oblast) (2018 - 461,000 people; 2019 - 471,000 people).
However, the main visitors to the national parks are Russians. The share of foreign tourists during this period amounted to only 3 percent of tourists, as reported by the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia.
Within the framework of the federal project “Preservation of Biological Diversity and the Development of Ecological Tourism” of the national project “Ecology”, Russia is expected to open 24 new special protected natural areas and to form infrastructure for the development of ecological tourism. This process involves the development of territories adjacent to the protected areas involving the local communities. In 2019, representatives of large businesses began to actively participate in the implementation of the events.
In 2019, according to the results of the first year of the national project, 5 protected areas were created. These are Zigalga national parks in the Chelyabinsk region, Kytalyk in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Koigorodsky in the Komi Republic, Samursky in the Republic of Dagestan and Tokinsko-Stanovoy in the Amur Region.
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