Karadag Nature Reserve

Karadag nature reserve is one of the youngest on the territory of the former Soviet Union. For its creation 18 years ago there were real causes: it was necessary to preserve the unique natural formation, the remainings of ancient volcanic massif, concealing a lot of the most interesting and different information for geologists, biologists, zoologists. At the end of 70-es nearly 10 thousand people were having their summer holiday there as non-official holiday-makers and two times as many tourists visited that picturesque place momentarily. The animal and vegetable world have suffered greatly from such visits, the stock of minerals and halfprecious stones were destructed predatorily, met in a great number on Karadag bays and slopes. The fear appeared that in 20-30 years Kara-Dag would turn into the desert, would stop being the natural sight of the world level.

18-year respite has affected very beneficially. Many kinds of flora and fauna have restored considerably. Nowdays the local flora contains more than 10 thousand kinds among which there are quite a lot of endemics, these plants are not met anywhere on the globe. 29 kinds of espesially rare plants are noted down into the Red Book. On the territory of the reserve nowdays there are 35 kinds of mammals, 130 kinds of birds, 15 kinds of reptiles, a lot of rare insects. 18 kinds of animals are noted down into the Red Book. Behind these figures there is a huge scientific, instructive guarding work of scientists and collaborators of the reserve.

Some years ago there was opened ecological path on which scientific collaborators lead excursions during the whole season. Each year the popularity of dolphinary with trained dolphins and sea fur-seals is growing, it is a real small circus on water. There were opened the aquarium, museum of exotic animals, picture gallery of the painters' presents, those painters who worked in Kara-Dag and left there the memory about themselves.