Ukraine in the history of the movement for the conservation of geological heritage in Europe

Abstract

The paper focuses on the history of the movement for preservation of geological heritage of Ukraine, closely related to the history of geoconservation in Europe; determines the relationship of the extent of geodiversity and geological structure of a certain country, political system, historical traditions and attitude towards wildlife and inanimate nature. Despite the fact that geodiversity and biodiversity have always been in parallel, traditionally all nations in all the continents have focused more on the preservation of so-called wildlife. The article describes that preservation of the so-called inanimate nature; provides a rather sufficient analysis of literature sources which report on the problem of preserving bio- and geodiversity not only in Ukraine, but also in other countries of Europe. In particular, the combination of biotic and abiotic constituents of nature proved to be an essential aspect in determining the place of the world`s first nature reserve and location of an important centre of Buddhism in Mihintale, Sri Lanka. The start of the movement for preservation of so-called inanimate nature in Europe could, with a certain extent of possibility, be considered the first historical written mention of the subject, which was declared in the 10th Chapter of Third Statute of Lithuania in 1588. That is protection of rivers against artificial change of their banks, change in currents and preservation of large erratic boulders. As an important stage of the beginning of the movement for preservation of the so-called inanimate, can be considered the year 1668, when in Germany the Baumannshöhle cave was preserved. It was first mentioned in the literature in 1565, and in 1646 the cave became an object of tourism. During the analysis of the historical stage related to the movement ProGEO, we emphasizes international events in which the representatives of the Ukrainian ProGEO group took part. Active work of the Ukrainian ProGEO group created conditions for transition to a new level of geoconservation, i.e. determination of the possibility of creating a new category of objects of the Nature-Reserve fund of Ukraine – geological parks (geoparks) as important locations for the development of geotourism and territories of complex conservation of the natural environment.