|
Building of tourism industry is one of the main priorities of Kazakhstan economy development. That is why geotourism development not only helps to attract attention to geological heritage but also agree with the main course of state development.
The first and the simplest step is geotourism development in already existing especially protected natural territories (EPNT): today reserves, national parks, nature monuments of Kazakhstan occupies nearly 70000 sq.km. The majority of them are oriented only on the protection of biodiversity and do not have any information on geological structure or geological heritage of their territories. During the project ?Geological justification for geoparks creation in Kazakhstan? realization 12 territories of potential geoparks were tested, 8 of them already have the status of EPNT. It should be noted that Kazakhstan has practically unlimited possibilities for geoparks development and the work done is only the first step towards this direction in the range of available financial and temporal resources. It should be necessary to choose the most worthy candidates. These works were preceded by the process of thorough information selection including both the published and fund literature study (most territories do not have maps of geological natural monuments location as this aim was included in geological mapping only recently) and numerous talks with geologists engaged in field work here in different years.
Even brief field survey showed that the protected territories are very perspective for geotourism development. The Administration of these areas was advised to include geological tours into tourist programmes demonstrating both picturesque landscapes and interesting complexes of rocks and minerals, stratigraphic sections, paleontological fossils, tectonics, volcanism etc. Organization of such tours is possible even now. If special geological mapping is done to reveal geological sites and composing of geological routes the potential of these territories will increase many times.
More over, geotourism development inside the existing EPNT requires less funding. Firstly, the infrastructure for non-geological tourism is already built here; secondly, local geological monuments are under protection as they are located inside EPNT. Surely, head of reserve should carry out great work together with geologists ? popularization of geological objects, compiling of visual and competent geological maps, creation of geological expositions in museums, guides' training etc. Giving reserves the status of geoparks will help to attract more tourists. But this status is not obligatory for geotourism development and the first steps must be done now.
The study and dissemination of experience on geoconservation, geotourism and geoparks creation in the leading countries (West Europe, China, USA) is very important for this work activation in Kazakhstan.
Later the experience of geotourism development in EPNT could be spread beyond their range.
|
