About us - NaTourEst

NaTourEst is a travel company specialized in nature tours in Estonia. Our goal is to offer our clients unforgettable and unique experiences. We lead birdwatching and mammal watching tours, also botanical, natural history, and other specialised nature tours. As nature is our working field, we also try to give back and contribute to nature conservation. Read more about our conservation efforts. Our doings in various fields of activity have been covered by various media editions.

The company itself was established in 2008. Our team consists of experienced naturalists and young enthusiastic nature guides.

We cooperate with some well-known European nature tour companies. For example:

Germany

The UK – Naturetrek; Wildlife Travel and Speyside Wildlife

The Netherlands – Birdingbreaks

France – Escursia

Switzerland – Liberty Bird

Denmark – Scanbird

History

2009 – NaTourEst built the first and the only working Brown Bear hide in the Baltic States;
2010 Begun our cooperation with the German touring company Birdingtours and in May we had our first longer birding trip with a group.
In May 2010, Ben Hoare from BBC Wildlife visited our Brown Bear hide and saw a wild Brown Bear for the first time in his life.
2011 – we started developing self-guided nature tours with a smart device;
2011 – For the first time, a camera was installed next to our Brown Bear hide and it transmitted a live stream, so people could watch from their homes which animals were visiting the hide. The stream gained a lot of popularity on the site looduskalender.ee and it was followed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world.
In 2013 we visited the British Birdfair with our team for the first time.
2013-2014 Production company Coraxfilm makes a spectacular two-part documentary movie about nature in the Baltic States. It was shown in TV-channels such as ARTE, ARD, NDR, ZDF, and others. In Estonia, Natourest was the local partner for the movie crew. We helped to film Ringed Seals, Brown Bears, Caspian Terns, the North-Estonian Klint coast, the annual floods of Soomaa National Park, and other scenes.
2017 – we bought land in Alutagus region and built 2 new Brown Bear and Wildlife Watching hides.
In 2019 Estonia was the official partner of the annual Migratory Bird Days (Zugvogeltage) in Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park (Nationalpark Niedersächsisches Wattenmeer) and Natourest was the representative of Estonia.
2020 – Together with the IT-company Loquiz, we developed a platform for making smart-guided tours. Our smart-guided tours run now on an app (Loquiz) making it much more comfortable, user-friendly, and quicker.
2020 – We survived the worldwide Covid-19 crisis, which hit hard the whole tourism industry, and started the project of establishing new Brown Bear hides in the Alutaguse area.
2020 – French ARTE TV filmed Raccoon Dogs from our Brown Bear hides for a documnetary about different “wild dogs” of the world.
2022 – we made first special Lynx watching tours.
2023 – Started the cooperation with Naturetrek Wildlife Holidays ans Speyside Wildlife Tours from UK.
2024 – we opened LUX and Premium Bear Watching Hides.

Our Team

Rein Kuresoo

Guide and Trainer

Languages: English, German, French, Finnish, Swedish, Estonian

E-mail rein @natourest.ee

Rein Kuresoo belongs to the narrow circle of leading naturalists in Estonia. He has working experience both with ornithologists and botanists, but probably the most successful period of his life was connected with establishing and leading a conservation organization, the Estonian Fund for Nature (or ELF, Eesti Looduse Fond). Two national parks and several large protected areas were established in 1991-95 in Estonia in 1991-95, proposed by ELF under his chairmanship.

Rein has led bird, plant, and general nature trips since 1989 and has written and illustrated lots of books about nature and gardening. He has also authored several textbooks for schools and teachers.

Rein has the ears of an owl, an amazing ability to filter out the spectrum of most subtle birdsong from the bird choir and a bird’s sense of orientation in the middle of nowhere.

Responsibilities in NaTourEst: