Tervete nature Park

Introduction

The purpose of the ICHI exchange to Latvia was to give people working in Interpretation and tourism in Scotland a chance to learn from, and share ideas with, Latvian organisations. The content of the trip was based around natural history and environmental interpretation and our main guide Maija Malnaca worked for the Natural history Museum in Riga (Latvijas Dabas Muzejs) running a programme training environmental guides all over Latvia. The other guides on our trip were graduates of this training programme.

I am currently working as Interactive Displays Manager at National Museums Scotland on the Royal Museum Project which includes six new natural history galleries. I have a background in Science Communication but working on this current project is my first experience of museum-based natural history. For me it is an area I would like to pursue in future projects elsewhere in Scotland after the end of my current job and to this end I am studying part-time in environmental sciences and land management in my own time.

I wanted to go on the trip to Latvia because I am really keen to see other approaches to natural history interpretation. Latvia is particularly interesting because the country is covered by 55% forest and Latvian society appears to place a high value on the environment. It is also a completely new culture to me which I knew little about in an area where I had never travelled and so I hoped for some really fresh new ideas.

Itinerary

Maija from the Natural History Museum in Riga organised our trip and itinerary but did not accompany us the whole week, instead she left us in the very capable hands of the other guides who were all graduates of her environmental guides training programme.

Our itinerary was as follows:

Main Guide: Maija Malnaca

Day

Travel Itinerary

Saturday, 6 of June

Travel to Latvia

Sunday, 7of June

Riga Zoo and Ethnographic Open Air Museum

Guide: Daiga Leimane

Monday, 8 of June

Talsi Tourism Information Center and surrounding area

Guide: Inese Roze

Tuesday, 9 of June

Tervete Nature Park

Guide: Lilita Bogdane

Wednesday, 10 of June

Environmental Information Centre Pakalniesi, State Forest Service

Guide: Inese Mailite

Thursday, 11 of June

Gauja National Park

Guide: Meldra Langenfelde

Friday, 12 of June

Saturday, 13 of June

Riga Natural History Museum

Guide: Maija Malnaca

Impressions and reflections

My job involves working with both curators and learning and programmes staff to share my knowledge and expertise with them in the process of developing our own exhibits. Everything I learn from visiting other institutions and talking to other museum professionals feeds into this and so I make a point to visit lots of different centres for interpretation – both exhibitions and workshops. During our visit to Latvia I was continually looking for approaches to interpretation and learning about the environment and nature that could apply back in Scotland either in my current work or in the future.

In general I was absolutely inspired by the quality of interpretation and workshops we saw. I was particularly impressed by the workshops and guided trails out in the forests in Lauma Nature Park (Talsi), Tervete Nature Park and at Pakalniesi.

Riga Zoo

The first place we visited in Latvia was Riga Zoo which is on the outskirts of the City. The zoo was set up to show native Latvian species and although it has now expanded to include giraffes and hippos and such-like, they are most proud of their native species work. In particular, 2008 was the 20^th anniversary of their reintroduction programme for the European Tree Frog which was extinct in Latvia but now has a healthy wild population in Kurzeme, Western Latvia.

I noted the boards in the zoo for each animal were very clear, in Latvian, Russian and English, and showed in images without too much text (considering it was tri-lingual) for each animal the habitat, lifespan/lifecycles, diet and status in the wild.

Among the live animal exhibits, I noticed some really nice low-tech interactive interpretation boards. One in particular hand-painted wooden wheels which allowed visitors to match the animal with the animal products using colour-coding to indicate the correct answer, another in the tropical house showed the proportion of different types of animals (insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mammals) on Earth and had lift-flap questions.

I did not know at this stage that hand-painting and the use of natural wood for such panels was to be a recurring theme throughout Latvian nature interpretation. It is an approach we do not see much in the UK which is a pity as it really seems in-keeping with the subject and surroundings and seems to appeal to a family audience.

Ethnographic Open Air Museum

The Ethnographic Open Air Museum was again on the outskirts of Riga. It is an open-air display of traditional Latvian living set in woodland. Some of the 19^th century timber buildings were brought to the museum from other parts of Latvia while others were reconstructed for the museum. On the Sunday we visited there was a craft fair in the woods showing traditional knitting, basketry, wood carving etc. this was very popular and the car parks for the museum were filled to overflowing with probably many hundreds of visitors. There were also food stands serving outdoor cooked traditional Latvian food and drinks.

The museum buildings themselves had very little interpretation, just a small label saying what each building was, but with the museum staffed dressed in traditional costume the whole area was very atmospheric and exploring the trails to find more and more buildings was very engaging.

Talsi Tourism Information Center and surrounding area

In the small picturesque town of Talsi our guide was Inese from the Tourism Information Center. She showed us a number of sites around the area including the opportunity to bake traditional Latvian cakes from that region, an introduction to the archaeology of the area, a recreation area and the place that made most impression on me; Laumas Nature Park.

Laumas Nature Park is a private enterprise. The owner told us how she came to own the land in 1990 (after Soviet systems of collective farming and state land ownership broke down). When she came to see the land, which had been her grandfathers, it was clear that it was too wet and poor for agricultural use. Instead they dug out ponds and moved in a collection of plants they had to form an ornamental garden for their own use. People came to see the gardens and over time they built up a public park where they charge entry and have trails, activities, mini-golf, camping, a guesthouse and a function-room popular for wedding parties.

They now have nature trails themed on flowers, bees, birds and fungi and a sports trail with adventure playground type apparatus. Some of these trails are self-guided using the provided map and interpretation boards placed in the forest while others such as the bees trail have a guide who takes groups round and runs what is essentially a family workshop on the move. I thought the bee trail in particular was really good. With bees in the headlines at the moment, it could easily be translated into a family workshop in our Museum but doing it out in the forest really added another dimension.

Tervete Nature Park

Our next stop was Tervete Nature Park run by the Latvian State Forest. Latvian State Forest is a joint-stock company owned by the state to run the state-owned forest (around 50% of all Latvian forest). They run the timber operations and sell the timber, reinvesting 1.5% of their profits back into education and the returning the rest to the state.

Tervete Nature Park is their largest forest recreation site; it is 1200 hectares – one third of which is themed with trails devoted to families and populated by sculptures and activities related to the King of the forest, fairies, gnomes, devils and witches. The witches trail includes a costumed-interpreter as resident witch who interacts with families to play games but also give information on traditional Latvian herbal remedies used by the ‘witches’ of the past. The park won an award in 2005 for ‘the most family-friendly place in Latvia’ and it is easy to see why. With the themed trails, hiking paths, car parks, open fireplaces and camping sites there is a huge amount for families to do here.

In the new education centre our guide Lilita showed slides from their summer camps and public programmes associated with key festivals such as Easter and St John’s day (around midsummer) and Beltane. The children’s camps focus on both environmental education but also on similar outcomes to our outdoor education movement in terms of developing self-confidence. In one particular exercise the children are challenged towards the end of the camp to spend time in the forest in the dark.

Two things really stood out for me at Tervete: one was the interpretation boards on the nature trail which were beautifully hand-painted in a bright, fun and engaging way for families and children but also accurate representations of the trees, fungi, flowers and animals of the forest. The second thing that really stood out was the “King of the Forest Rules” this is a document which the children sign out in the forest in front of a wooden sculpture of the king, the rules include not picking wildflowers and other ways to respect nature but also include some fun elements such as references to fairies and gnomes.

Environmental Information Centre Pakalniesi, State Forest Service

After Tervete we drove across Latvia from West to East where we visited Pakalniesi training and education centre run by the State Forest Service.

The State Forest Service is different from the Latvian State Forest mentioned above. It is more of an administrative body controlling permissions and licenses in the forestry sector. Pakalniesi belongs to the Consultancy arm of the State Forest Service which deals with education and also training of both the general public and private forest owners. Private forest owners own around 45% of Latvia’s forests and the consultancy train them in forestry skills, environmental issues, European funding streams, hunting licensing and other issues.

At Pakalniesi we were shown a number of really great workshops including: using your senses in the forest, hunting and tracking, arts and crafts and identifying and learning about trees. We also went on a walking workshop about animal homes where we visited nests, hollow trees, the lake, a spiders web and an underground burrow and learned what lived in each then learned that the forest can be our home too. Many of the ideas here could easily be used in programming in our museum, particularly once we re-open the natural history galleries.

As a training centre, Pakalniesi has bedrooms upstairs for residential courses which we stayed in. Three of the staff also stayed with us and in the evening they took us to a ‘black sauna’ nearby which was an amazing experience of traditional Latvian culture in a very beautiful natural landscape.

Gauja National Park

Gauja National Park was established in 1973 as the first national park in Latvia. It is a NATURA 2000 site; NATURA 2000 is the largest coherent network of nature protected sites in the EU. It’s goal is to preserve wild areas and natural habitats and halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010.

The park is nearly 92000 hectares around the Gauja river valley and is and divided into five types of zone from nature reserves which are entirely protected through to neutral zones where there is permanent human habitation.

At Gauja National Park we first met our guide Meldra at the new visitor and education centre which they have just had built. Unfortunately this building will not be used for as many workshops and public events as they had hoped because recent economic conditions mean that another government agency is moving into the building as offices to save money. Meldra and a colleague showed us a number of their classroom-based workshops which were really imaginative and engaging. Again there was a workshop on the senses and it was becoming apparent by then that using your senses to understand the forest was a recurring theme in Latvia, this is something we can certainly do more of in Scotland. There were also activities about identifying tracks and different seeds and cones and shells etc.

The following day we explored various sites in Gauja National Park including a number of sandstone outcrops, forest trails, a photography exhibition and ‘forest classroom’ and an animal park.

Riga Natural History Museum

Our final day was spent in Riga with Maija again. We finally got to visit her museum which was a fitting end to our tour. The natural history museum (Latvijas Dabas Muzejs) was a fine, modern museum with a great mix of specimens and interpretation. I took many photos here of the interpretation of topics which we will be covering in our project – tectonics, volcanism, fossilisation, early life etc.

All the members of the group were particularly struck with the great education centre of the top floor. This was a bright and clean space where schools and family groups could attend workshops. The area was called ‘about the Sun, the Earth and Us’ and workshops covered: the earth, sun and moon, climate, habitats, animals and some basic information about traditional human cultures.

Unrelated to environmental interpretation, we also visited a Secret Soviet Nuclear Bunker in Gauja National Park which and the Museum of Occupation in Riga both of which were fascinating and moving and gave us a real insight into the effect of Soviet occupation on Latvia and Latvian culture and identity.

Going Forward

I really enjoyed the trip to Latvia and the value of everything I saw and thought about will not be fully evident for a long time to come as ideas and impressions become assimilated into my own work. I have benefited from thinking slightly different about environmental education and collecting lots of new ideas for workshops and exhibits.

This will benefit National Museums Scotland as I will share ideas and photos across a number of different departments - learning and programmes staff, natural sciences curators etc. I am particularly keen now to incorporate ideas about the senses, and identifying tracks and plants into my current work.

The trip has also benefited me personally as I have had the opportunity to learn about a new culture and make friends in another country. When I was at school Latvia was under the control of the USSR and so we did not learn anything about it. I now feel like I know much more about that part of Europe and am very impressed by the cultural resilience and friendliness of the Latvian people.