The III International Tourist Forum «Accessible Arctic» took place in Vorkuta. Its participants discussed issues on creating a tourist infrastructure in the Arctic to develop cultural projects in the region and coverage of "polar" issues by the media.
The International Tourism Forum "Accessible Arctic" has been held annually since 2016. The project is aimed at assisting to develop the Russian nature tourism, to ensure the stable development of the Arctic, to improve living standards of the population of the Arctic territories. The forum brings together tour operators, representatives of national parks, municipal and state authorities, journalists, foreign experts in the field of culture and tourism.
Within the framework of the forum, the first meeting of the joint working group of the Russian Geographical Society and the Federal Agency for Tourism (Rostourism) took place. Event participants discussed the creation of regional tourist clusters in the Arctic.
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Note that the development of the Arctic in Russia began in the XI century. Among the famous researchers who made expeditions to the region were the following: Semen Dezhnev, Vitus Bering, Semen Chelyuskin, Ferdinand Wrangel, Fedor Litke, Eduard Toll, and many others. In May 1937, polar explorer Ivan Papanin, who headed the first polar research station in the world, the Soviet North Pole-1 drifting station, reached the North Pole as part of the expedition. A month later, Valery Chkalov made the world's first non-stop flight from the USSR to the USA via the pole.
In 2009, the Russian Arctic National Park was created on the two polar archipelagoes of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land, the northernmost and first largest specially protected natural territory of Russia with a total area of almost 9 million hectares. Red book polar bears, ringed seals, white whales, narwhals, sea birds and other animals live there.
Despite the inaccessibility of the region, thousands of tourists from dozens of countries come to the Arctic every year. Travelers are especially interested in sports, extreme tourism, ecological tours, observation of animals in their natural habitat, reindeer and dog sledding.
The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of the Earth. It is adjacent to the North Pole and it includes the margins of North America and Eurasia, as well as almost the entire Arctic Ocean with numerous islands (except for the coastal islands of Norway), as well as adjacent parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The land areas of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation include the Murmansk Region, the Nenets Autonomous District, the Chukotka Autonomous Region, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area, some territories of the Komi Republic, the Sakha-Yakutia Republic, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Arkhangelsk Region, individual lands and islands located in the Arctic Ocean.