6 Russian Wildlife Reserves and National Parks Awarded by Toyota and WWF

Toyota Motor Russia (TMR) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have completed the annual grant competition for national parks and wildlife reserves of Russia. Based on the results of the competition national parks «Shushensky Bor», «Ugra», «Samarskaya Luka», «Kenozerksy» and wildlife reserve «Dagenstansky» were awarded grants for implementing their projects.

Toyota Motor Russia - general partner of the competition – increased grant amounts for winning parks compared with a year earlier and established an additional nomination among conservation areas situated in the company’s presence regions. Special nomination of Toyota is annually awarded since 2006. It is national park «Taganay» from Chelyabinsk region of Russia that won in this nomination this year. The fundamental idea of the project «Taganay for Everyone» consists in the development of a new ecological path enabling everyone to see beauties of the Southern Urals mountains. The essential part of the project includes the development of a special ecological itinerary for handicapped people and arrangement of permanent excursions for students of orphanage schools.

The theme of the national parks competition this year is «Partnership in Favour of Nature». Both environment-oriented and educational projects of specially protected natural areas operating on the territory of Russia became winners of the competition arranged by TMR in cooperation with WWF Russia. The mandatory condition of participation in this competition consisted in co-financing of projects on the part of other entities.

"Due to the World Wildlife Fund’s initiative (WWF) and support rendered by Toyota, from year to year a growing number of wildlife reserves and national parks have the opportunity to implement their environmental projects and demonstrate them to wider audiences. We hope that fostering of the younger generation in such a way that they would show attitude of care towards environmental heritage will assist in preserving conservation areas of Russia", noted TMR President Takeshi Isogaya.