Carpathian Biosphere Reserve

The Carpathian Biosphere Reserve is one of the largest protected areas in Ukraine. It covers 58,035.8 hectares in the east of Zakarpattia oblast and does not form a continuous block but six separate protected massifs — Chornohirsky, Svydovetsky, Maramorosky, Kuziysky, Uholsko-Shyrokoluzhansky and the Valley of Narcissi — plus two botanical reserves, Chorna Hora and Yulivska Hora. The altitudinal range runs from 180 m to the 2,061 m of Mount Hoverla, Ukraine's highest summit, and takes in the western, central and eastern sectors of the Ukrainian Carpathians.

The reserve was created in 1968 by resolution of the government of the Ukrainian SSR with a mere 12,672 hectares. In 1992 it joined UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves, and in 1993 a presidential decree formally turned it into a biosphere reserve. Successive extensions in 1990, 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2010 brought it to its present size, and in 2017 a transition zone of some 136,900 hectares was delimited in the surrounding land. It has been awarded the Council of Europe's European Diploma of Protected Areas on four occasions.

Its greatest value lies in the primeval beech forests: 20,980.5 hectares of virgin forest within the reserve were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2007 as part of the serial property "Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe". The mosaic runs from foothill woodland to montane beech forest, mixed and Norway spruce stands and subalpine and alpine meadows, almost untouched by human activity. Completing the picture are high glacial lakes, the mass flowering of the Valley of Narcissi, the karst cave of Druzhba — the largest in the Ukrainian Carpathians — and the spot claimed as the geographical centre of Europe.