The Bikin National Park has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List

Today, at the morning meeting of the 42nd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (Manama, Bahrein), the Bikin National Park has been inscribed on the World Heritage List. The Park has been inscribed on the List as a significant extension (more than 1.16 million ha in area) of the existing property Central Sikhote-Alin.

The Natural Heritage Protection Fund acted as the coordinator of the project for preparation of the Bikin River Valley nomination. The Institutes of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the RAS Far Eastern Branch, D. V. Likhachev Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, and the non-governmental organization BROC (Vladivostok city) took part in the work on the nomination in 2009-2017. The financial support was provided for the project by the Amur Branch of WWF.

The extension of the Central Sikhote-Alin site by virtue of the Bikin River Valley is an initiative of non-governmental organizations (World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace Russia, Bureau for Regional Outreach Campaigns (BROC), Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Natural Heritage Protection Fund) supported by Primorsky Kray Administration and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation.

The necessity to ensure protection of the endangered population of the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is one of the main reasons for preparation of the "Central Sikhote-Alin" serial nomination. Moreover, the cedar-broadleaf complex of the Bikin River valley is actually a globally unique and exclusive preserved entire tract of formerly wide-spread Ussuri taiga. Besides indubitable nature-protective value, its importance consists in the fact that it sustains in their natural state the habitats of the animal populations on whose well-being depends the fate of the indigenous human inhabitants of the Bikin River basin — the Bikin group of the Udeges.

The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), scaly-sided merganser (Mergus squamatus) and Blakiston's fish-owl (Ketupa blakistoni), which inhabit the nominated territory, have been inscribed on the IUCN Red List.

Draft decisions (Bikin River Valley)