ESSENCE, PECULIARITIES OF ACTIVITY AND SPACE ORGANIZATION OF NATIONAL NATURAL PARKS OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The Bequest is one of the most effective means of preserving landscape and biotic diversity in the world. The creation of protected areas of different levels is the finishing result of this process. These territories include, in particular,  national natural parks, for which various functions are assigned.

In our analytical study, we aimed to reveal the essence of national natural parks and compare them with other natural-protected territories, to study the history of the formation and features of the spatial network within the territory of Ukraine.

Environmental protection, tourist- recreational, scientific research and eco-education functions are the main functions which have been assigned to national natural parks in Ukraine.

National natural parks of Ukraine are different from the North American and Swiss (the most wide- spread in Western Europe) models of national parks with somewhat more priority of recreational activities and less stringent nature protection regimes.

Comparing the functional purpose of nature reserves (biosphere and natural) and national natural  parks, one can notice significant differences between these categories of protected areas. If the main functions of the reserves are environmental protection and scientific research, in particular the organization of background monitoring (scientific outsight) according to the state of the environment, then the primary tasks of the national natural parks consist in preserving the natural and historical-cultural heritage and ensuring all the necessary conditions for a relatively popular recreation of the population within the bounds of aesthetically-attractive and valuable natural complexes.

Such priority of the tasks, which are facing national natural parks, determine the division of their territory into separate zones for functional purposes. Thus, within the national natural parks of Ukraine, a protected area, regulated and stationary recreation zones, and an economic zone are allocated.

As of the end of 2017, 49 national natural parks were created in Ukraine. In the structure of the nature reserve fund, national natural parks behind their area yield only to protected areas of the local level and have a share of more than 30% of the total area of all the country's protected areas. The considerable advantage of national parks over biosphere and nature reserves is that their number and area almost tripled can be explained by more effective from a socio-economic point of view using the natural conditions and resources of the territories that are forgotten, an optimal combination of nature conservation and recreational and environmental education activities, and less strict regime of nature protection and greater accessibility for the population, as well as somewhat simplified procedure of formation.