Sikhote-Alin

The Sikhote-Alin zapovednik was established in 1935 in Primorsky Krai, in the south of the Russian Far East, across the range of the same name and reaching the coast of the Sea of Japan. It bears the name of the zoologist K. G. Abramov and protects some 4,000 km² of what is known as Ussuri taiga.

Its ecological value stems from an uncommon circumstance: here the Siberian taiga meets and mingles with the temperate and subtropical forest of Manchurian origin, the glaciations never having swept the region clean. The result is a unique plant and animal community, with Korean pine forest and an understorey of pink rhododendron living alongside boreal species, and numerous endemics.

It is the world's reference site for observing and studying the Amur tiger, the largest tiger subspecies and one of the most threatened, whose population has slowly recovered from critical lows in the mid-twentieth century. It shares its territory with the Amur goral, the Asian black bear, the musk deer, the sable, the leopard cat and a birdlife that includes the red-crowned crane, the black stork and the demoiselle crane. The property Central Sikhote-Alin was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2001 under criterion (x), that of biodiversity, and was extended in 2018 to take in Bikin National Park, which protects the largest block of intact Ussuri taiga.