First national park in Moldova will include 15 villages of Orhei and Straseni

05.06.2010 10:28
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The Orhei National Park, the only of the kind in Moldova, will occupy an area of over 20,000 hectares and will include 15 villages – 14 of Orhei district and the village Romanesti of Straseni district. “This project is a real pearl,” Alexandru Teleuta, the director of the Chisinau Botanical Garden, said in a seminar held in Orhei to launch an awareness raising campaign to inform the population about the necessity of conserving biodiversity, Info-Prim Neo reports. The first national park of Moldova will contain four areas, two of which recreational – a temporary one where one could visit picturesque places and a permanent one where there will be built hotels and tourist resorts in the future. In the temporary recreational area, a company already erected several holiday cottages on the bank of a lake, where the people can rest in exchange for a payment agreed with the owner. The other two areas of the park will be for research and integral protection. In one of them, there will be grown plants, crops and trees, including oaks, ashes and lime trees, said the head of the Seliste forest administration, Gheorghe Cuza. “We plan to inform the population of Orhei region, especially about biodiversity and the creation of the Orhei National Park. I think we will do a good and useful thing,” the head of the NGO ProRuralInvest, Viorel Gherciu said in a news conference held in Orhei in open air. “This is the first project of the kind. The fact that Moldova will have a national park is a big success,” said Minister of the Environment Gheorghe Salaru. The Orhei National Park is a project devised by the Ministry of the Environment. It is financed by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by UNDP Moldova. The US$2 million project will be completed in 2013.