FEDIR
D. HAMOR
Doctor
of
Sciences
(Biology),
Professor,
Director
of the Carpathian
Biosphere
Reserve
«Only
by maintaining harmony between men and nature
it is possible to secure future for our civilization», –
this is the motto of the famous nature conservation scientist
Fedir D. Hamor, one of the persons who actively contribute
to the implementation of sustainable development in Ukraine,
an initiator of the Carpathian Convention and a number of
other programs and documents on nature protection, the
author of over 300 publications.
Fedir Hamor was born in
1951 in a highland villageVerkhne Vodiane, Transcarpathian region of Ukraine.
Already since his school days he
had been charmed with the picturesque nature,
but at the same time the young man
was worried with indifferent position to the environment issues by the society.
These feelings became even more exaggerated when
he worked in the Velykyi Bychkiv forestry
enterprise, studied biology at the Uzhgorod State University,
occupied
different positions in regional bodies
of the Komsomol organization, Communism Party and
other managerial institutions in Soviet period. And
combining practice with
preparation of the PhD (1980)
and Doctor (1990) thesis helped
him not only to gain deep theoretical knowledge,
but also to get a better picture of
the processes occurring in the nature use system and
understanding of the situation
with public's ecological
responsibility. That is why on
becoming the Director of the Carpathian
Biosphere Reserve in 1987, Dr. Hamor started
actively contribute to these issues. First of all,
he successfully struggled for
extension of CBR's boundaries by almost five times more (up to 58.000 ha),
gained inclusion
of the reserve to the List of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (1992), worked
out propositions to the Law of Ukraine
«On the nature protection fund of Ukraine», initiated
and prepared justification for the following Laws:
«About the special status for mountainous settlements in Ukraine», «About the
moratorium for clear logging in spruce-beech
forests on mountain slopes
in the Ukrainian Carpathians»,
as well as propositions
to the decrees of the Government
of Ukraine on sustainable development of
mountainous
communities, designation of
the Ukrainian-Romanian
transboundary biosphere reserve in
the Maramures mountains etc.
He created Museum of Mountain
Ecology and Traditional Nature
Use in the Ukrainian Carpathians
(Rakhiv), which is the only of its kind in Ukraine, ecological
education centers «Museum of Narcissus» (Khust),
and the ones in the Geographic Center of Europe and
in the Carpathian highland area. Prof. Hamor is
also an initiator of the ecological semi-popular
magazine «Zeleni Karpaty» (Green
Carpathians) (1993) and a regional
newspaper «The Newsletter of the Carpathian
Biosphere Reserve» (2006). An important fact testifying
to the international recognition of his activity is
listing the Beech Primeval Forests of the Carpathians
to the UNESCO World Natural
Heritage List. This is the
first natural Property for
Ukraine, so this has been followed by a special
Action Plan for protection and development of the Ukrainian part of the
nominated beech primeval forests. As an
outcome of Director's activity, the
reserve was awarded with the European Diploma (1997;
2002; 2007) and became a partner in numerous international
ecological projects.
Fedir
Hamor managed to organize a great number of
important international conferences dedicated to the
issues of sustainable
development and conservation of natural and cultural
heritage in the Carpathians.
Prof
Fedir Hamor is the Honored Officer of Nature Conservation
in Ukraine; he is also awarded with a national
medal «For the Contributions – III», with an award
of the international contest «Golden Fortune», the
Transcarpathian award for
regional development etc. He is the Academician of
the Ecological Academy of Sciences of
Ukraine, a member of the Journalists Union of Ukraine,
the honored Ukrainian tourism
activist, an honored citizen of Rakhiv and of a Romanian town Viseul-de-Sus.