Authorities in the Murmansk region in northwestern Russia are beginning preparations to set up a nature park, a Kola Wild Life Preservation Center official said Thursday.
      The Kano-Umbsk Park will be established along the river Umba, where hundreds of unique cave drawings made by Stone Age people that inhabited the Kola Peninsula have been discovered.
      At the end of August, an expedition comprising painters, photographers, biologists, nature preserve planning specialists, experts on cave paintings and tourism instructors went to the area to collate data for the project of the future nature park. They collected information on the river itself, rare wild animals and plants, possible eco-tourism itineraries, mapped existing tourist camps, and calculated pollution levels.
      The official said the cave paintings near the river Umba had been discovered in 1997 and had not been thoroughly studied yet. The earliest images date back to 3,000-2,000 B.C. and the latest are thought to have been drawn in the Middle Ages.
      
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