Protected areas of Ukraine

Protected areas of Ukraine are areas created with the goal of protecting the natural and cultural heritage of Ukraine from excessive changes as a result of human activity. The protection of the areas is the responsibility of the government of Ukraine, specifically the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Designation and administration

There are two separate ministries that, together with the Cabinet of Ministers, administer the preservation of protected areas on the national scale. Local preservation is conducted through the regional State Administrations. The areas or landmarks that are designated as protected may carry either cultural or environmental value. Environmentally protected areas and objects in Ukraine are designed in the Nature Preservation Fund (PZF, "Природно-заповідний фонд України") which includes national parks, (nature preserves), natural landmarks, biosphere preserves, and other areas. Areas and objects from the cultural heritage, including museums, are also protected. The preservation of these areas and objects is supervised by different government ministries, which designate special agencies for the task of preservation. All objects from the cultural heritage are recorded in the State Registry for Fixed Landmarks of Ukraine (sometimes - simply as the Registry).

Since 2010, the governing body responsible for the organization, protection, and use of the Nature Preservation Fund has been the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, which designated the State Service for Nature Preservation as a specialized department. The governing body responsible for the organization, protection, and use of all recorded nature preserves, museums, and other objects in the cultural heritage is the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine), which designated Derzhkultspadshchyna (abbreviated for the State Cultural Heritage) as a specialized department for this preservation.

Museums

Cultural preservation in Ukraine is conducted by the Ministry of Culture, as well as by individual museums, which may or not be state-owned. Museums are generally regulated by a special law on museums, which differs from the statutes of the government agency Derzhkultspadshchyna;;however, museums that are part of a cultural preserve fall under the jurisdiction of the government and are supervised by Derzhkultspadshchyna. Individual museum objects or collections that are constantly kept on the territory of Ukraine, regardless of their origin and ownership, as well as museum objects or collections that are located outside of Ukraine and are property of Ukraine or subject to return there, according to international laws, are part of the Museum Fund of Ukraine. The Museum Fund of Ukraine may or not be part of state program for the preservation of the cultural heritage.

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

The preservation of the cultural heritage and natural environment in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is exclusively conducted by the administration of that zone, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Emergencies.

Nature preservation

History

The Main Directory of National Nature Parks and Nature Preservation, which supervised the protected areas of Ukraine, was created in 1995. In 2001 the Directory was reorganized into the State Service for Nature Preservation. Of all the different kinds of protected natural areas, the most important are considered to be nature preserves (zapovedniks), national nature parks, and nature reserves (zakazniks). The total area of the protected areas of Ukraine consists of 3,268,000 ha (8,080,000 acres), or around 5.4% of the total area of the country. The largest categories of protected areas are regional nature reserves, which account for over a third of the Nature Preservation Fund, and national nature parks, which represent about a quarter. The smallest are botanic gardens and zoos. In 2010, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, through the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, submitted a proposition for parliamentary review, which outlined a plan for the development of the national ecological program of nature preservation through the year 2020. This proposal would increase the protected areas of Ukraine twofold.

The scope of protected natural areas in Ukraine encompasses land and water areas, nature complexes and objects that carry special nature-protecting, scientific, aesthetic, recreational and other value. Areas are designated protected in order to preserve the natural variety of landscapes and the gene pool of their fauna and flora; to support general ecological balance; and to provide background environmental monitoring. Under the laws of Ukraine, these areas are treated as a part of the national heritage, as well as an integral part of the global system of natural areas and objects that are under special protection.

Classification

To the Nature-Preservation Fund of Ukraine belong:

• Natural areas and objects: nature preserves, biosphere preserves, national nature parks, regional landscape parks, nature reserves, natural monuments, protected tracts;
• Artificially created objects: botanic gardens, arboreta, zoological parks, park architecture monuments.

Nature reserves, natural monuments, botanic gardens, arboreta, zoological parks, and park architecture monuments depending on their ecological and scientific, historically cultural value maybe a state-wide or local importance.

Depending on origin of other features of natural complexes and objects that were declared preserves or natural monuments on purpose and necessary regime of protection:

• nature reserves are divided on landscaping, forestry, botanical, generally-zoological, ornithological, entomological, ichthyological, hydrological, generally-geological, paleontological, karst-speleological;
• natural monuments are divided on complex, botanical, zoological, hydrological, and geological.

Forms of property

Territories of nature preserves, preserved zones of biosphere preserves, land and other natural resources given to the national nature parks are property of Ukrainian people.

Regional landscape parks, zones (buffer, anthropogenic landscapes, regulated preservation regime) of biosphere preserves, other lands and natural resources (included, but not assigned) of national nature parks, nature reserves, natural monuments, protected tracts, botanical gardens, arboreta, zoological parks, park architecture monuments may be property of Ukrainian people as well as any other forms of property provided by legislation of Ukraine.

Botanical gardens, arboreta, and zoological parks created before June 16, 1992 are not subject to privatization.

In case of change of form of property on land where located nature reserves, natural monuments, protected tracts, park architecture monuments the landowners are required to ensure the regime of their protection and preservation with a respective reregistration of conservation obligation.

Legal basis of functioning

Objective, scientific profile, nature of operation and regime of the territories and objects of the PZF are defined in the provisions on them, developed in accordance with this Law and approved:

• central body of executive power in the sphere of Environmental Protection for the territories and objects of the Nature-Preservation Fund of national importance;
• local bodies of the central body of executive power in the sphere of Environmental Protection for the territories and objects of the Nature-Preservation Fund of national importance.

Nature preserves, biosphere preserves, national nature parks, botanic gardens, arboreta, zoological parks of state-wide importance as well as regional landscape parks are legal entities.

Botanic gardens, arboreta, zoological parks of local importance and park architecture monuments may be recognized as legal entities in respect to the legislation of Ukraine.

Culture Preservation

Classification

There are three major classes for objects of cultural heritage.

• structures (creations) - individually standing compositions of architectural and engineering art, compositions of monumental sculpturing and monumental painting, archeological objects, caves with existing evidence of human activity (building or quarters in them that preserved an authentic evidence about prominent historical events, life and work of known individuals);
• complexes (ensembles) - unified or separate topographically defined set of objects of cultural heritage among each other;
• prominent sites (points of interest) - zones or landscapes, nature-anthropogenic creations that brought to our time a value from an archeological, aesthetic, ethnological, historical, architectural, creative, scientific, or artistic perspective. (See List of historic reserves in Ukraine)

There are following types of objects of cultural heritage:

• archeological
• historical
• of monumental art
• of architecture
• of urban development
• of park architecture
• landscape
• of science and technology

Forms of property

All monuments except monuments of archeology may be a property of state, community, or individual. All monuments of archeology including the ones that are underwater along with any movable objects related to them are a state property. Such movable objects are attributed to the state part of Museum Fund of Ukraine, and subject for registration and preservation in accordance with law.

Form of property on a treasury that is considered a monument (attraction) is defined by the Civil Codex of Ukraine. In a document that certifies the form of property on a monument are indicated category of the monument, date and the number of decision for its state registration.

Lands where located monuments of archeology are property of state or withdrawn (sold) to state in the established by law order, excluding the land plots with the monument of archeology as fields of ancient battles.

Organization of objects of cultural heritage

In order to protect the traditional nature of the environment of populated places they recorded in the List of historical populated sites of Ukraine which is approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Any urban, architectural, and landscape transformations as well as building, meliorative, road construction, and any excavations without the permission of the respective authority for protection of cultural heritage is prohibited.

Complex (ensemble) of monuments with its entire collection of components that carry cultural, historic, and scientific value, specially, planned, and functionally allocated within the structure of a populated settlement or localized outside of it, maybe declared a historic-cultural preserve of state or local importance. Historic-cultural preserved territory is declared a historically formed territory, within which remained significant number of objects of cultural heritage.

See also

• Categories of protected areas of Ukraine
• Seven Natural Wonders of Ukraine
• Protected area
• State Registry of Fixed Landmarks of Ukraine
• List of historic reserves in Ukraine
• UNESCO protected areas in Ukraine

External links

Statutes

• Law of Ukraine on nature-sanctuary fund of Ukraine
• Law of Ukraine on preservation of cultural heritage of Ukraine
• Law of Ukraine on protection of archeological heritage
• Template:Uk icon List of historical populated sites of Ukraine
• Template:Uk icon List of museums that carry museum collections and objects of state property
• Про затвердження Порядку визначення категорій пам’яток для занесення об’єктів культурної спадщини до Державного реєстру нерухомих пам’яток України

Internet sites on information about the protected areas

• All-Ukrainian Museum Association
• Ukrainian center of cultural research
• Ukraine incognita, an amateur informational site on protected areas in Ukraine created by local geographical specialists and activists of the Center of Ecological Monitoring of Ukriane (CEMU)
• An amateur site on cultural monuments of Ukraine, two times winner of the best historical website dedicated to monuments
• Echo of Ages, Ukrainian Internet Portal on monuments preservation
• Botanic gardens and arboreta of Ukraine