Bolshekhekhtsirsky State Natural Reserve (Khabarovsk Territory, Russia) was established on October 3, 1963. The area is currently 45 439 hectares. The area of the security zone is 12,000 hectares.
The name of the reserve comes from the name of the
Bolshoi Khekhtsir ridge. The name of the ridge, according to the
most "beautiful" version, comes from the name of the shaman
Heekchir. This is how V.K.Arseniev describes the legend about him:
Long ago, Gold Haekchir Faeiguni lived in a lonely fanza. He was
a good hunter and always had an adequate supply of yukola for his
dogs. Haeekchir was once in Sanshin on the Sungari River and brought
out a white rooster from there. After that, he began to feel
burdened by his loneliness, lost sleep and began to eat badly. One
night, Haekchir Faenguni went out into the street and sat down at
the porch of his house. Suddenly he heard the words:
- Master,
close the windows, there will be a thunderstorm before the light.
Haekchir turned around and saw that it was the rooster who spoke to
him in a human voice. Then he went to the river bank, but then he
heard a whisper over his head. The trees spoke among themselves. The
old oak rustled with leaves and told the young ash tree what he had
witnessed for more than two hundred years. Haekchir was frightened.
He returned to his fanza, lay down on the kan, but as soon as he
began to doze, he again heard rustling and voices. These were the
stones from which the hearth was made. They were going to crack if
they got this hot again. Then Haekchir realized that he was called
to be a shaman. He went to the Nor River, and there the Manchu
shaman instilled in him the spirit of Tyenku. Haekchir soon became
famous - he healed ailments, found lost and took the souls of the
dead to the "afterlife." His fame spread throughout the Ussuri
valley, the Amur and the Sungari River.
The reserve is located in the Khabarovsk region of the
Khabarovsk Territory, 15-20 km south of Khabarovsk, within the
Bolshoi Khekhtsir ridge. The western border of the protected area
runs along the banks of the Ussuri, next to the state border of
Russia; southwestern and southern - along the channel of the Chirka
River, a tributary of the Ussuri; the eastern and northeastern
regions bypass the developed lands stretching along the railway and
adjacent to the suburbs of Khabarovsk.
The administration of
the reserve is located in the village of Bychikha, Khabarovsk
region.
Apart from the plain Chirka River, which borders the reserve from the south, all the numerous rivers and streams flowing along the Khekhtsir gully have a typical mountain character; their length is up to 20 km. The northern ones flow into the Amur channel, the western ones - into the Ussuri River, and the eastern and southern ones - into the Chirki River.
The diversity of flora and fauna has long attracted the attention of travelers and scientists. NM Przhevalsky, who visited here three times, noted: "The Khekhtsir ridge represents such a wealth of forest vegetation, which is rarely found in other, even more southern parts of the Ussuri region." In 1935, Khekhtsir became a local nature reserve, and since 1959 - of republican significance. The reserve was created by the order of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR dated October 3, 1963, on an area of 46,000 hectares. In 2009, the boundaries of the reserve were surveyed. The total land area was 45,340 hectares. Special merit in giving the reserve status belongs to the corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. S. Khomentovsky, the well-known writer-game expert V. P. Sysoev and the game expert N. V. Mikhailov.