National Park "Moose Island" in Moscow

The history of elk island, marked by written sources, has several centuries. The first mention of the territory on which the Park is located in its modern borders refers to 1406, the period of completion of the formation of Moscow as the center of northeastern Russia. At this time, Elk Island was part of the Tainininsky Palace volost, which stretched east of the Trinity Road (now the Yaroslavl Highway), and, according to many documents, was a favorite place for falconry and bear hunting of Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

This territory: from the former royal village of Alekseevsky (the district of the VVC and the Kosmos Hotel), along the Trinity Track to the former village of Bolshaya Mytishchi (Mytishchi) and, in fact, to the current eastern border of the Park, excluding the Yauzsky wetland complex and Alekseevsky forestry, constitutes the historical core of the Elk Island. In the area called Alekseevskaya Grove, a hunting palace and ponds were built. Now it is the 38th, 39th and 40th quarters of the Alekseevsky Forest Park, and the place of the palace estate is guessed by the relief of the land and the remains of the garden layout of the surrounding groves.

However, the name itself - "Moose Island" or "Losino-Pogodny Island" - appears in documents only in 1710.

With the foundation of St. Petersburg, attention to the Elk Island as a place for leisure of the royal court and the nobility decreased significantly, which affected its general condition: the wastelands began to overgrow with forest, and protected groves were actively cut down for the needs of peasants of neighboring villages and villages. The situation has changed since 1804, when the regulation on the organization of the state guard was issued. Forest protection has been strengthened again.

After the revolution, even during the fuel crisis, the harvesting of firewood in this territory was prohibited, and the elk island was included by the Moscow Council in the category of especially valuable forests. In 1920, Elk Island was transferred to the Petrovsky-Razumovskaya (now Timiryazevskaya) Agricultural Academy. From 1922 to 1925, the massif was administered by the Moscow Forest Institute, then the Central Forest Experimental Station as a base for research. In 1931, the territory was part of the forests of the 50-kilometer green belt around Moscow, later it was defined as intended exclusively for environmental protection and forest park purposes.

Even during the Great Patriotic War, forest planting did not stop in Elk Island. Forestry and culture here is associated with the names of many enthusiasts: forester D. N. Marinin and landscape architect M. P. Korzhev, forester and a great connoisseur of the Moscow region fauna V. G. Barkov invested a lot of work in the preservation and enhancement of the forest wealth of the Elk Island.

To this day, many features of the natural Central Russian nature have been preserved in Losiny Island. This is a kind of natural museum, which presents all the diversity of vegetation and fauna of the near Moscow region.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of such a unique natural complex, and therefore the most important task of today is to develop measures for its further preservation and rational use for educational and recreational purposes.