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See Previous Submission
John Farrington
Kyrgyz Republic
July 2004
Protected Areas of the Central Tian Shan
The two most insidious challenges one faces when attempting to do fieldwork in the remote areas along the Kyrgyz Republic’s shared border with China, are 1) the weather, and 2) obtaining a border zone travel permit from the Kyrgyz army border patrol. From January to March the road to my chosen study site was closed by deep snows, April and May brought avalanche season, while June brought warm sunny days that flooded the road with snow and glacier melt. In July, the flooding continued unabated with the onset of rainy season, which swelled rivers and caused glaciers in the area to melt off at an even faster rate.
More problematic and far less predictable than the weather were my attempts to obtain a permit to travel in the border areas of Issyk Kol province. Unlike other nations with similar permit requirements, the Kyrgyz Republic as yet has no simple application to fill out, and no apparent process for issuing these permits. My only instructions were brief: “Get a letter and go to the army base.” To make a long story short, obtaining a permit required three and a half months; nine different letters from the U.S. Embassy, a nature reserve, and my university – the first eight of which had some trifling detail that was unacceptable; one eight-hour jeep ride to a border patrol post near the nature reserve, five six-hour bus rides between Bishkek and the provincial capital of Karakol, two visits to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, three visits to the National Security Service, and nine visits to the offices of the Kyrgyz army border patrol. Having persevered in this quest, I emerged from the “process” 12 weeks later with a permit good for travel in the border zones of one of the two provinces I wished to study, which would remain valid for four months.
While unwittingly being transformed into a living Kafka character by the permitting “process,” I was inadvertently provided with abundant opportunities to examine land use and management practices in the many spectacular protected areas along the southeastern shores of Lake Issyk Kol, including Karakol National Park, and the Jeti Oguz, Altyn Arashan and Chong Jargylchak Wildlife Sanctuaries. These four reserves encompass four parallel mountain valleys on the north slopes of the stunning Terskey Range, each of which rises from the grassy meadows of the Lake Issyk Kol basin, through forest and alpine meadow ecosystems, and finally end at the forbidding ice falls which cascade down from the crest of the range. Each valley is said to provide refuge for the endangered snow leopard and other threatened species of animals and plants. However, unlike American parks and sanctuaries, each reserve is worked by active tree planting and timber cutting operations, and also by livestock herders who persist in the ancient Kyrgyz tradition of driving livestock into high mountain meadows for the three summer months, creating somewhat unusual scenes of large herds of horses grazing at the foot of glaciers.
With border permit in hand, in late June I struck off for the Sarychat Ertash Nature Reserve, located across the Terskey Range, amidst the high plateau valleys of the inner Tian Shan, a landscape bearing a striking resemblance to the Tibetan Plateau or the Bolivian Altiplano. Ironically, arriving at the remote border patrol post where I’d been turned away five weeks earlier, the check-point gate was wide open and no soldiers were to be seen. “It’s Sunday, they’re sleeping,” the driver explained to me as we drove through the open gate without stopping. After an all-day drive through a number of swollen rivers, and over one collapsed bridge that had been mended by two flimsy planks spaced for jeep tires, we arrived at Sarychat Ertash.
Established in 1995 as the Kyrgyz Republic’s single largest protected area, the 100 kilometer Ertash River valley had until that time been home to two herding collectives and up to 20,000 sheep. However, in an extremely rare example of intensively used land being allowed to revert to wilderness, upon creation of the reserve the few remaining herders in the area departed with their sheep, and the entire river valley was dedicated exclusively to the protection of snow leopards, their primary prey - marco polo sheep and ibex, and other endangered species such as the Tian Shan bear.
Although just across the mountain from the dense forests and lush meadows of Karakol National Park, Sarychat Ertash is a barren land of glaciers, tundra and arid grasslands situated at elevations between about 8,000 and 17,000 feet. Yet, in spite of the harsh climate, once collective herding operations ceased, wildlife in the reserve flourished, and today Sarychat Ertash has been transformed into the “Central Asian Yellowstone.” Over the course of a five-day horse trek through the reserve, we managed to see nearly 200 marco polo sheep—the Asiatic big horn—as well as ibex, fox, wolves, ubiquitous marmots, frequent bear spoor and numerous birds of prey.
Although Sarychat Ertash has proven that, if protected, wildlife will quickly flourish in the Tian Shan, serious problems continue to face conservators of the Kyrgyz Republic’s rich natural heritage. A proliferation of new mines and upscale hunting camps catering to affluent foreign hunters limits the possibilities for expansion of the country’s protected area system at critical sites. Ranger salaries continue to remain almost non-existent, at about $20 per month, forcing rangers to spend much of their time managing their own private livestock herds in order to survive—rather than patrolling parks. Meanwhile, illegal timber cutting and poaching of wildlife are rampant. While the prognosis for preserving high levels of biodiversity in the Tian Shan remains good at this time, without generous international assistance in carrying out conservation projects this situation may rapidly change for the worse.
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