Xinjiang Tianshan

Xinjiang Tianshan is a serial natural property inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2013 that brings together four components of the Chinese sector of the Tian Shan range, one of the largest mountain chains in the world and the largest in Central Asia: Tomur, Kalajun-Kuerdening, Bayinbuluke and Bogda. The range extends for thousands of kilometres across China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and this property gathers the areas of greatest natural value in the Chinese stretch.

Its most characteristic feature is contrast. The Tian Shan rises abruptly above the desert basins of the Taklamakan and Dzungaria, so that within a few kilometres one passes from an extremely arid, hot desert to a world of snow-covered summits, glaciers and alpine lakes. That leap produces a very sharp altitudinal zonation and supports the complete succession of Central Asian environments: desert, steppe, Schrenk's spruce forest on the shaded slopes, subalpine and alpine meadows, and the domain of ice. Bogda includes the celebrated Heavenly Lake (Tianchi); Bayinbuluke protects a great basin of high-altitude grassland and wetland; Tomur holds the highest peak in the range; and Kalajun-Kuerdening preserves extensive spruce forests and mountain meadows.

The fauna is that typical of the Central Asian mountains: snow leopard, argali, Siberian ibex, wolf and brown bear in the high zones, and in the wetlands of Bayinbuluke an important breeding colony of whooper swan, one of the most southerly of the species. The flora combines boreal, Central Asian and Mediterranean elements, and the Schrenk's spruces form forests that exist only in this range.