The Bashkiriya National Park or Bashkir State Natural Reserve is located in the Republic of Bashkortostan, on the spurs of the Southern Urals.
Bashkiriya National Park was organized on June 11,
1930. The area is 49,609 hectares.
In 1951, by the decision
of the Council of Ministers of the Bashkir ASSR, the reserve was
liquidated, and a forestry was organized on its territory: intensive
forest exploitation began.
Only in November 1958, the first
nature reserve in Bashkiria was restored. Until 1986, the reserve
consisted of 3 sections: Ural-Tau, South Krak and Pribelsky. The
latter in 1986 was transformed into an independent reserve -
Shulgan-Tash.
In 2006, through the efforts of students and
staff of the Moscow State University. MV Lomonosov Moscow State
University (Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics) and ScanEx
RDC developed a map of natural territorial complexes of the reserve.
The reserve is located in the central part of the
Bashkir (South) Urals, within the Burzyansky, Abzelilovsky and
Beloretsky districts of Bashkortostan. The natural boundaries of the
protected object in the north are the Kaga river, in the east - the
western slopes of the Uraltau ridge, in the south - the Uzyan river,
in the west - the eastern slopes of the southern part of the Kraka
ridge.
The relief of the reserve is mountainous. The tops of
many of the ridges are flattened, leveled, and forested. Continuous
forest plantations on the slopes give way to the peaks of the
southern mountain steppes, large and small glades with rich forbs.
In both areas, the relief has its own characteristics.
The
reserve is located in the Atlantic-continental climatic region of
the temperate zone. The climate of the reserve is not the same in
different areas, but in general it is severe: frosts reach -45
degrees. In the mountains, frosts also occur in the summer months.
The weather varies greatly from year to year. Ice drift is observed
in the first half of April, and by the end of the month the snow
melts as well, remaining only on the northern slopes of the
mountains. More than 500 mm of precipitation falls, their maximum
falls on the summer-autumn period.
Bashkiriya National Park is home to about 700 species of herbaceous, shrubby and woody plants; 51 species of mammals and 155 species of birds, 27 species of fish, 4 - amphibians, 6 - reptiles live. The wild Bashkir bee (Apis mellifera) is still found in the forests of the reserve.
The reserve was created to protect the undisturbed ecosystems of the Cis-Urals, primarily undisturbed forests. The main direction of scientific research of the reserve is a comprehensive study of natural ecosystems on the western slopes of the Southern Urals.
On July 6, 1998, the head of
the Burzyansky District Administration of the Republic of
Bashkortostan issued decree No. 549, providing for the allocation of
hay lands by the Bashkir Reserve to two collective farms (moreover,
this decree was issued in accordance with an earlier adopted and
equally illegal decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Bashkortostan
on the same issue).
The Republic of Bashkortostan is actively
working on the issue of alienating a land plot from the territory of
the Bashkir Reserve in order to develop a chromite deposit. Back in
1994, Staratel LLC approached the administration of the reserve with
a request to allow the development of chromite deposits in quarter
124. In 1997, an appeal for the rejection of 4 quarters for the
extraction of chromite ores and the solution of social issues of the
region came from the administration of the Burzyansk region. A
similar proposal was made by the head of the district administration
in 2000. In 2003, the head of the Burzyansky district administration
wrote a letter to the speaker of the State Duma of the Federal
Assembly of the Russian Federation G. Seleznev “on the rejection of
4 quarters and the solution of social issues in the village. Sargaya
”(the central estate of the reserve is located in Sargai).
Initiating the same issue, in April 2003 the head of the municipal
formation "Kulaginsky village council" with the participation of the
head of the Burzyansky district administration held a gathering of
residents of the Sargaya village. In May 2003, the same issue was
considered at a meeting of the Committee on Agrarian Issues, Food,
Ecology, Natural Resources and Environmental Management of the State
Assembly of the Republic of Bashkortostan. In March 2004, GDK Khrom
LLC applied to the United Main Directorate of Natural Resources and
Environmental Protection of the Ministry of Natural Resources of
Russia for the Republic of Bashkortostan with a request to allow the
extraction of chromite ores in the territory of the Bashkir Reserve.
At the moment, up to 500 hectares are engulfed in fire in the Sargan
Range in the Bashkir State Reserve (Burzyansky, Abzelilovsky and
Beloretsky Districts), and many other forest areas of the Southern
Urals.