Orlovskoye Polesye National Park
Orlovskoye Polesye is a national park of Russia, founded in 1994. The park covers 777 km2. The attractiveness and peculiarity of the territory of the national park gives both the beauty of the natural landscape and the presence of unique objects, as well as its connection with the culture and history of Russia. On the territory of this park there is a village that dates from the end of the 1st millennium BC. Among the cultural monuments there is a church in villages called Khotiml-Kuzmenkovo and Llgov, a chapel in a settlement called the Nine Oaks.
This park was founded to preserve and restore the unique natural complexes of Central Russia, as well as to promote the revival and preservation of cultural heritage, to give the inhabitants of the country environmental education, to form tourism in the natural conditions of nature. In Oryol Polesie, work is underway to increase the population of bison living in a natural environment.
The local land is hilly with altitude drops from 200 to 260 meters. From the rivers it is worth noting the Vytebet, which is part of the Oka River Basin. Near the tributaries of the Vytebeti River there are small channels in which you can find the rarest plants for this region: an aloid telorez, a swamp tour and a clean-white jug. There are very few natural lakes in the park, but many made by man are 72. The largest of the ponds appeared in the Zhuderskoye field. The territory of the park, located in the region of temperate continental climate, characterized by warm summer periods and cool winters.
In the Orlovskoye Polesie park, the largest forests in the Oryol region grow, which consist mainly of mixed forests. From the trees you can meet pine trees, spruce, oak, linden, aspen, maples. Representatives of the forest-steppe zone meet in the vegetation of the park: the tong-footed, fragrant, thin flask, the son-traw, the purple goat and the Russian sink, you can find characteristic types of northern forests - the common juniper, the umbrella winter-lover, double-leaved minic, blueberries, pin, European saddler and common sour.
The fauna of the Oryol Polesie park is quite unique in its representatives. There live 174 species of birds, 49 representatives of mammals, 26 species of fish swim in rivers and lakes. In the park you can easily meet dummies, rowers, lynx, roe deer, wild boars, beavers. To date, over two hundred bison live in the park, the number of Russian exhuhol, which is found in Russia, is also being restored.
Oryol Polesie is famous for its pastries. In one of them, it is established that the hero Ilya Muromets fought here with the Frontier Nightingale in the village of Nine Oaks, located on the lands of the park. According to legend, there used to be a thick grove in the place of the village, in the depths of which 9 oaks grew, growing from one foam and closely woven among themselves. In the branches of oaks and the Nightingale-robber with his gang, exposing the Odrin Monastery, as well as robbing and killing travelers in the district.
The writer Turgenev I.S. described these edges in the cycle of the stories "Hunter's Notes". The park has a small zoo, which is home to 40 species of animals and birds. The park is also interesting for its monuments of archeology: the settlement of Radovishchi, one of the oldest in the territory of the Oryol region that founded the balts in the 5th century BC; Radovishchi burial ground, built in the 11-13th centuries.
