Travel to Aksu-Zhabagly Nature Reserve

On 14 July 1926, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic established the Aksu-Zhabagly Nature Reserve on 30,545 hectares of the Western Tien Shan to protect the flora and fauna of the Aksu and Zhabagly river valleys. It was the first nature reserve created anywhere in Central Asia, predating every other protected area in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. In 1929, the spectacular Aksu River canyon was annexed to the reserve, and by 1935 the protected area had expanded to 48,570 hectares with the addition of the Baldybrek river valleys. Today the reserve covers 131,934 hectares at elevations from 1,100 meters at the steppe edge to 4,238 meters at the summit of Peak Sayram, known locally as Aktyueolgen, the Lying Camel.

The reserve occupies the northwestern edge of the Talas Alatau range where the Tien Shan mountains meet the Kazakh steppe, a transition zone that produces extraordinary biodiversity. The ancient Silk Road passed through these foothills, and Bronze Age and early Iron Age monuments related to cattle herding have been found in the reserve’s proximity, along with two paleontological sites at Auliye and Karabastau where fossilized imprints of prehistoric plants, fish, insects, and reptiles are preserved in shale deposits. In 2016, UNESCO designated Aksu-Zhabagly a World Biosphere Reserve, and the Western Tien Shan transnational serial site, shared with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, received World Heritage status the same year.