Russia At Risk:
Altai Steppe and Foothills

Located in the heart of southwestern Siberia, the Altai steppe lands and foothills are a unique and beautiful landscape and a focal point for conservation and sustainable development in Siberian Russia. Altai’s sweeping mountain and steppe landscapes and stunning biodiversity attract ever-increasing numbers of visitors from both Russia and abroad.  Local residents, especially the native peoples indigenous to the area, rely on these lands for survival, raising livestock, low-intensity farming, homeopathic herbs, and other non-agricultural nature products.  Scientists agree with both Altai’s visitors and local people that the preservation of this important ecosystem is a Russian national priority.

Unfortunately, the biodiversity of Altai’s steppe foothills is at very high risk. Altai’s steppe lands were originally comprised of rolling grasslands, buffered by forested areas and riparian zones along creeks and rivers. These lands provided, and continue to provide, important habitat to a number of unique species in the plant and animal kingdoms. But over the last centry, much of the landscape has been converted to agricultural use, and in recent years, the impacts of increasingly intensive and unsustainable agricultural practices have been exacerbated by resource developers seeking short-term profit.

Numerous important species, including golden eagles, bustards, and other raptor species, bats, the red-cheeked ground squirrel, and a wolf-relative known as the korsak, are threatened or endangered.  Threats to these species and their steppe land habitat are heightened by uncertainties and loopholes in protected areas regulations that are widespread throughout Russia. And a fundamental lack of baseline environmental studies and mapping projects has added to the confusion.

Local conservation efforts

Preserving and supporting the remaining portions of the steppe foothills is an important goal in the overall conservation of biodiversity in Altai. There is genuine local and regional interest in protecting these remaining intact areas for future generations.  This is due, in part, to increased coordinated efforts by local NGOs to lay the necessary groundwork required for protection, as well as the recognition by local governments of the importance and value of Altai’s biodiverse and beautiful natural resources. 

At present, Pacific Environment’s partners in Altai are leading planning efforts for a number of proposed protected areas, including Chemal Nature Park (Republic of Altai), Loktinskii Steppe Nature Refuge (Altai Krai), and increasing the buffer zone of Tigirekskii Zapovednik (a nature reserve) by 10% to include six nearby natural monuments (Altai Krai).

Partner focus: 
Siberian Environment Center (SEC)

Over the past two years, Ilya Smelyansky from Siberian Environment Center (SEC) in Novosibirsk has led a project to conserve steppe ecosystems and their connected flora and fauna in the Altai foothills. To date, this project has already completed GIS mapping of the larger region; identified and evaluated several key concentrations of black taiga forest, intact riparian areas, and grasslands; and begun preliminary outreach to local residents.  SEC has also conducted a number of expeditions for specialists to examine tract boundaries from a variety of viewpoints, including zoology, botany, conservation, agriculture, threats, and small-scale local conservation efforts.  SEC has done an excellent job of working collaboratively with land-users to develop localized conservation plans that allows the land-users to continue to use the land for agricultural or other purposes when they are consistent with conservation goals.
 
Looking forward
 
SEC and Pacific Environment have been extremely pleased with these short-term outcomes in what promises to be a multi-year process.  In the long-term, conservation agreements such as these will result in sustainable land use, positive conservation outcomes, and an overall greater sense of cooperation and collaboration among all the stakeholders of the region.  Importantly, SEC’s initiative offers the potential to establish a precedent for land conservation in Russia through conservation easements with private parties.  Such an approach is quite new in Russia and is likely to become an important tool for conservation as the government pushes land privatization and resists the creation of further government-supported protected territories due to budgetary and other issues.