Forests

On all sides the Kenozero National Park is surrounded by forests, and the territory of the Park itself is covered by three-quarters of the forest taiga vegetation. For thousands of years, the evolution and change of climatic epochs mixed pine-spruce forests have been formed on this territory, occupying an area of about 106 thousand hectares, or 76% of the territory of the Park. The economic development of the territory has significantly changed their appearance.

In the modern forests of the Park, mixed with composition and complex in structure, stands predominately pine and spruce plantations, the age of which does not exceed 120 years. The relative youth of the forests is due to the rather active use of slash-and-burn agriculture in the past, which radically changed their age and breed structure. The «artificial» unstable state for many centuries and the «fringe» effect created an additional variety of environmental conditions, affecting the biodiversity of the territory.


Nevertheless, fragments of indigenous forests (about 5 thousand hectares), practically unaffected by economic activities, have been preserved on the territory of the Park. They are located in lowland, wetlands and are represented by long spruce and sphagnum pine forests. The age of trees growing there is from 160 to 350 years. Although these plots do not represent the entire range of types of indigenous forests, they can be considered as reserves of natural biological diversity of taiga forest complexes, which disappeared in the region even in the distant past.

The flora of the forests

Throughout the forests of the Park are widely distributed north-taiga species - blueberries, northern linnia, stiff club-moss, horsetail, sourdough, two-leaved bead-ruby, European grayhill. There are many European species: a forest fern, a white-winged marsh, a marsh wilderness, a folded mannik. A total of 715 species of higher vascular plants from 96 families are recorded in the Park, of which 25 are classified as rare and endangered. The greatest number of species falls on the following families: Compositae, Cereals, Sedkovye, Rosaceae and Noricornae.


The degree of study of the biota of the Kenozero national park as of April 2015: The park's fleet consists of 640 species of higher vascular plants, 150 species of mosses, 131 species of lichens, 163 species of fungi. Here there are 322 species of terrestrial vertebrates, including 50 species of mammals, 263 species of birds, 4 species of reptiles, 5 species of amphibians, as well as 34 species of mollusks, 162 species of insects. In almost 300 water bodies with a total area of ​​more than 20 thousand hectares, there are 28 species of fish and 2 species of lampreys. A total of 66 species of plants and animals included in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation and the Arkhangelsk Region were found on the territory of the Park.

Animal world

The forest fauna of the Kenozero National Park has 50 species of mammals, among which the representatives of the European taiga dominate. Of the small mammals, the background species are the red vole, the dark voles, and the common shrew. In forest biotopes, the most abundant are squirrels, hare-hare, marten; on meadows and felling - ermine, fox; on rivers, streams and lakes - mink, otter and beaver. At the eastern borders of its range there live a chipmunk and a European mink. Typical in the forests of the Park are residents of taiga forests like a bear, a wolverine, a lynx, an elk, a wild boar.