Two national parks and two nature reserves will be created in Russia in the Year of the Environment, which will be held in 2017, Vsevolod Stepanitsky, Deputy Director of the Department of State Policy and Regulation of Nature Conservation at the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, told RIA Novosti.

"New national parks and nature reserves will be created during the Year of the Environment and the Year of Specially Protected Areas," Stepanitsky said, adding that they expect decisions to be taken next year to create Sailyugemsky National Park in the Ulyanovsk Region, the Ingermanlandsky Nature Reserve in the Leningrad Region, the Vasyugansky Nature Reserve in the Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions, a federal reserve on the New Siberian Islands and Ladozhskiye Shkhery National Park in Karelia.

Russia currently has 12,900 various specially protected areas with a total area of 204 million hectares, or 11.9 percent of the country's territory. The core of the system comprises103 state nature reserves, 50 national parks and 59 federal reserves.