Bikin National Park in the Primorye Territory will be set up by the end of the year, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Sergei Donskoi said. He added that the territory was the key habitat of the Amur tiger.

Bikin is one of the few remaining relicts of the pre-ice age cedar and broad-leaved forests in the northern hemisphere. It is part of virgin woodland covering an area of 4,000 sq. metres.

The national park will stretch for 1.1 million hectares, with 600,000 hectares allotted for indigenous peoples’ traditional pastimes. The park will also incorporate the Verkhnebikinsky State Nature Reserve and part of the Bikinskaya traditional nature management area.

The Bikin River basin is a unique nature complex. Apart from the Amur tiger, it has brown and Himalayan bears, elks, Far Eastern red deer, spotted and roe deer, musk deer, boars, minks, sables, lynx and wolverine.