Rural population ageing and decline is a serious problem throughout Europe resulting in a deterioration of the socioeconomic situation in rural areas. This leads to land abandonment, and consequently the loss of valuable cultural landscapes. Protected areas are no exception and inhabitants also face restrictions arising from the protection status. The aim of this study is to identify the existence, extent and nature of the socioeconomic impacts derived from the protection status on the local population. Population and socioeconomic indicators were compared with the results of in-depth interviews with local stakeholders within 2 Estonian national parks and contextualised with recent social change. It was concluded that protected areas have a considerable socioeconomic impact and in order to preserve cultural landscapes, achieve conservation objectives and contribute to balanced regional development, measures must be taken

Keywords:This article discusses the conservation of protected areas of Estonia and rural cultural landscapes, in order to provide baseline information for key institutions in protected areas to develop more efficient management policies for cultural landscapes. Based on demographic and settlement analysis of protected areas, we found that present conservation management practices in limited management zones do not guarantee the sustainability of cultural landscapes, as human activity there is practically vanishing. We found that ensuring sustainable human activity, which is the key factor to preservation of cultural landscapes, benefits from the reduction of legal and practical restrictions on human activity in limited management zones. We propose a methodology which can be used to assess the viability of settlements located in protected areas and select endangered settlements (~20% of settlements located in protected areas), where relieving restrictions of nature conservation would be beneficial. Additionally we propose four possible policies for reducing such restrictions.Protected area management, nature conservation, cultural landscapes, natural and cultural heritage, rural development, rural depopulation, settlement viability, community development.

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The authors explore the main trends and regional peculiarities of ethnic transformations during the post-Soviet period in the Russian and Estonian borderlands. Special emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the share of two dominant ethnic groups – Russians and Estonians. It is argued that the main trend of ethnic transformations is an increase of the share of the dominant ethnic groups in the structure of population. The almost Russian-speaking Ida-Viru county in Estonia is an exception, where together with a small growth in the share of Estonians, there was growth in the number of Russians. The authors analyse the dynamics of smaller Baltic-Finnic nations – Ingrians and Setus (Setos), living in the Russian border area with Estonia.