Sary-Chelek

The Sary-Chelek Biosphere Reserve was established in 1959 in western Kyrgyzstan, in Jalal-Abad province, in the foothills of the Western Tian Shan, and protects some 239 km². UNESCO recognised it as a biosphere reserve in 1978, and in 2016 it was added to the World Heritage List as part of the serial property Western Tien-Shan, shared with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Its core is Lake Sary-Chelek, set at around 1,900 metres among wooded slopes and formed, on the most widely accepted interpretation, by a great landslide that dammed the valley. Six smaller lakes lie around it.

The botanical value of the region is of global reach: the slopes of the Western Tian Shan hold the most extensive wild fruit forests on the planet, with walnut, apple, plum, pistachio and almond growing in the wild. They are the genetic reservoir from which many cultivated varieties descend, and their conservation is of agronomic importance that is hard to overstate. The Western Tien-Shan property was inscribed for precisely that reason, together with its fauna, which includes snow leopard, Tian Shan brown bear and Siberian ibex.