Losiny Ostrov

Losiny Ostrov National Park was established in 1983 and was, along with Sochi, one of the first two national parks in Russia. Its name means "elk island" and describes its situation well: some 116 km² of forest, meadows and peat bogs surrounded by the Moscow conurbation, with roughly a third of its area inside the administrative limits of the capital.

It is one of the few cases in the world of a forest of this size enclosed within a megacity. The territory was protected long before the declaration: it was a royal hunting ground from the fifteenth century, and the tsars reserved its woods for big game, which prevented their clearance as the city grew around them. In the nineteenth century regulated forest management was already being applied.

The vegetation combines pine woods on sandy soils, spruce, oak and lime stands, with a sector of peat bogs and wetlands in which the river Yauza, a tributary of the Moskva, rises. Despite the urban pressure, the park keeps a stable population of elk, which give it its name and which occasionally wander into the outlying districts, alongside wild boar, roe deer, beavers and a rich forest birdlife. Fragmentation by roads and railways, pollution and recreational pressure are its main conservation problems.