Darwin State Nature Reserve - is an important and protected natural area in the Russian Federation. Its creation was established by a decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the summer in 1945. At the moment, the area of ​​the reserve of 112 673 hectares, while the area of ​​the protected area is 27 028 hectares. In autumn 2002, Darwin Nature Reserve granted the status of an international biosphere reserve by UNESCO. It is situated on the coast of the famous Rybinsk Reservoir, namely at the junction of Yaroslavl, Tver and Vologda regions. Darwin Reserve occupies the tip of the peninsula, which juts out from the deep north-west to south-east area of ​​the Rybinsk Reservoir. Peninsula - undrowned is part of a vast Mologa-Sheksna lowlands, the largest part of which is hidden under the waters of the reservoir.

Create Darwin Reserve was carried out in order to preserve a truly unique nature of the Mologa-Sheksna interfluve, and to study the impact of actions of the Rybinsk reservoir on the numerous elements of the whole natural complex. Bowels of the earth, flora and fauna, water, which are in the area of ​​the reserve - all of this ever withdrawn from economic use and is provided in the full use of the reserve rights provided for by the relevant federal laws.

Reserve has four main divisions: Security Department consists of several forestry - Gorlovka, Central, and Zaharinskogo Morotskogo; Science Department; Department of Environmental Education, formed in 1999, and the Department of maintenance of activity, are more crucial task of economic orientation. The reserve is composed of Nature Museum with the exposition and dioramas of the reserve; there is also a collection of dendrological, ecological path and room for Environmental Education.

Embossed Darwin Reserve - monotonous. The area is a flat lowland plain with small manes - hills. Most of the territory is given over to tracts of pristine wetlands man, because changes in the marshes, even outside the reserve can be very detrimental to all state natural reserve complex.

The value of the Darwin of the natural complex as security features fish productivity of the reservoir is very large. Impossible lot of shallow bays - these are the main feeding grounds and spawning commercial stock of fish in the Rybinsk reservoir. To maintain and increase the high productivity of fish living in the reservoir, it is necessary to provide a special regime of protection throughout the coastal zone of the reserve.

Shoal Darwin Reserve is very well warmed, giving life to many moisture-loving plants: sedges, cattails, rushes, bentgrass, sparganium, alisma, hornworts, and many other representatives. Due to the fact that the largest part of the land protected area is covered with pine forests, land especially rich in blueberries, cranberries and cloudberries.

The reserve is home to an unprecedented variety of birds and animals typical of the Vologda region. Here you can find weasel, marten, squirrels, wolves, otters, badgers, moose, foxes, hares. Especially a lot of bears in the reserve. In recent years, it multiplies the number of wild boars that have successfully settled and multiplied in a conservation area. In thickets many owls, black grouse, grouse, greater spotted eagle, black vulture, sparrow hawk and falcon species.

Biologist Darwin Reserve Nemtseva Vyacheslav Vasilyevich was the world's first farm capercaillie. For 50-year-old was able to work a unique collection of butterflies, which has virtually all the representatives of this class of insects found in the northwestern part of Russia.

By the unique features of the protected zone and are peat islands; Many peatlands have been flooded with the advent of the reservoir, but the huge layers of peat surfaced and went adrift on the waves - they are now growing not only grass, but trees.