Tourism and other types of revenues of protected natural areas: opportunities and prospects

Functioning of the system of state nature protection territories in Russia has not been focused on the promotion of educational ecotourism for a long time. Certain changes in this direction were to appear together with the organization of the first national parks, but their activities had focused on solving environmental problems for many years. Significant changes in approaches to the management of state nature protection territories in Russia have occurred in recent years, when the tourism development was put in a number of priority objectives for these institutions. The state has increased investments in tourism infrastructure and at the same time introduced a fee for tourists to visit protected areas. The study examines these and other sources of income of specially protected natural areas using the example of protected areas in the basin of Lake Baikal. It is concluded that the introduction of fees from visitors allowed to bring the share of this source of income to 10% of the total income for most visited protected areas (through the example of “Zapovednoe Pribaykal'ye”). At the same time, the opacity of the protected areas' budgets, as well as the insufficient improvement of the tourist infrastructure, do not allow forming a positive attitude of visitors to this policy. The author considers the examples of interaction of protected areas with large business, whose support until now was mostly episodic. The article also provides cases of the contribution of volunteers to the implementation of the main objectives of protected areas. State provides special support for this direction within the framework of the Year of volunteer in Russia. The work was carried out within the framework of the scientific project No. 0347-2016-0006 "Socio-geographical factors of ecological and socio-economic transformations in the Siberian regions from a sustainable development perspective".