The first Lesson about protected areas in the new  year was January 11, 2018, the 101st birthday of the country’s first Russian nature reserve. His audience was volunteers — eco-educators.

The first open class All-Russian Lesson about protected areas took place in the main building of the Moscow State Pedagogical University. It is this legendary Moscow Institute that has grown many generations of educators and professional environmentalists. This Lesson was organized by the Ecocenter «Zapovedniki» together with the Russian movement of schoolchildren.

We all remember that after the departed 2017 — the year of Ecology and Рrotected areas, came a new year — Year of Volunteer.  The first this year’s  Lesson «zapovedny» was solemnly opened by the director of the Ecological Center «Zapovedniki» Natalia Romanovna Danilina, the advisor to the Minister of Natural Resources Dmitry Mikhailovich Belanovich, the deputy director for regional interaction of the Russian Children and Youth Center Dmitry Evgenievich Pokrovsky, the deputy head of the «Mospriroda» Vera Vyacheslavovna Strukova. They greeted all  those present and sent their best  wishes to do new important things for the benefit of preserving and studying nature, helping our reserved areas.

Participants of the event were members of the Moscow State Pedagogical University volunteers’ center, representatives of Russian protected areas, guests from other educational institutions, schoolchildren and leaders of eco-groups of the Russian schoolchildren movement together with teachers. Our reserve was represented by Deputy Director Svetlana Rodionova and specialist of the Department of Environmental Education and Cognitive Tourism Sergey Maslov.

The audience of the participants of the Lesson about protected areas expanded the possibilities of the Internet: for example, the director of the national park «Taganay» Alexei Yakovlev spoke to the audience on Skype. A great interest was caused by video interviews of leaders and participants of student volunteer groups who work in protected areas.

Each of the participants was able to pass interesting test tasks – to determine the names of the various nature reserves of their main objects of protection and the purpose of creation. In addition, a survey was conducted on the extent to which the participants in the reserve lesson are personally prepared to help the reserve business as volunteers, what tasks would be considered most important and feasible.

So, the ecological-educational season-2018 is open!

In 2017 almost 600 thousand schoolchildren took part in the All-Russian Lesson «zapovedny». They learned about the beauty and uniqueness of protected areas in different regions of Russia, about rare species of animals and plants, about the invaluable contribution of reserves to preserving the nature of our country and the entire planet Earth.

It is very important that all inhabitants of the country learn about the reserved territories, the national treasure of Russia. And that every reserve, national park has a lot of volunteers and friends.