Landscapes of Dauria

The Landscapes of Dauria were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2017 and form a transboundary natural property shared between Mongolia and Russia, with some 9,127 km² spread across both sides of the border, in north-eastern Mongolia and southern Siberia.

It protects an exceptionally complete example of the Daurian steppe ecoregion, which extends from eastern Mongolia into Russia and north-eastern China. The property brings together the whole gradation of that steppe, from wet grassland and wetlands to dry steppe and the forests of the transition towards the taiga, along with lakes, marshes and river systems.

Its most singular feature is a dynamic one: the region is subject to climatic cycles lasting several decades that alternate wet and dry periods, during which the lakes fill and dry out completely and the plant and animal communities shift. That oscillation, which in most ecosystems would be destructive, is here the very engine of the system, and conserving it calls for protecting a territory large enough for the species to move across. The wetlands are a critical staging post on the East Asian migratory flyway for cranes, bustards and waterbirds, and the steppes support the migrations of the Mongolian gazelle, one of the last great ungulate migrations on the planet.