The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will draft amendments to the law On Specially Protected Natural Areas within the established time frame upon the instructions of President Vladimir Putin.

The President instructed the Government to prepare and hold public hearings on the draft amendments and their adoption before 1 July 2014.

The amendments will toughen regulations for nature reserves and national parks. They will ban rezoning of lands and forests and change in their use. They will also establish a classified list of reserves to be turned into national parks.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Rinat Gizatulin said: "The law On Specially Protected Natural Areas will rightly include a list of nature reserves that have indeed been national parks in terms of their protection regime and the number of visitors in the last few decades."

"The amended law will help us to avoid excessive administrative procedures since we will be able to discuss all of the listed reserves during the elaboration of these amendments to the law, and considerably reduce the time required for processing all legal documents," he said.

The ministry will also exclude a provision on the period of organisational procedures required for turning reserves into national parks. "We won't simply need this transitional provision because the law will have direct regulations," Gizatulin said.

It was reported earlier that the need to amend the law was caused by the fact that for many years several nature reserves were used for large-scale recreational and other activities that do not conform to the status of reserves, but are fully adequate for national parks. Of Russia's 102 state natural reserves, no more than seven will be converted into national parks. None of the seven are on UNESCO's World Heritage List.