The Kivach reserve was opened in 1931 - it became the first protected area in the Republic of Karelia.  The place for the reserve was not chosen by chance: the pine massifs of the Sopokh and Voronovsky pine forests had to be protected from extermination.  In the middle of the 17th - beginning of the 18th century, the Sopokh forest was almost completely destroyed for the sake of the production of charcoal and ship timber.  Massifs around the village of Konchozero, Spasskaya Guba suffered.

 Today, only coal pits remind of those times, and in the rocks along the shores of the lakes there are semi-handicraft copper mines and shallow adits.  On the site of the almost destroyed Sopokhsky, Voronovsky, Vikshitsky pine forests, a forest is growing again.  The average age of trees reaches 135 years, and some - 240 and even 440 years. 
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