Shulgan-Tash is a state nature reserve in Bashkortostan with
federal status. Located in the western foothills of the Southern
Urals, in the mountain-forest belt, within the Burzyansky region.
Total area: 22,531 ha (225 sq. km). The name comes from the Bashkir
words "shulgan" (dropped, disappeared) and "tash" (stone).
Together with the Altyn-Solok reserve, it is part of the Bashkir
Ural Biosphere Reserve, which is a candidate for inclusion in the
UNESCO World Heritage List.
The reserve was created in 1958
as the Pribelsky branch of the Bashkir reserve, and on January 16,
1986 it became an independent reserve. The basis for the
organization of the reserve was the living in this region of the
core of the purebred aboriginal population of the honey bee - the
Burzyan bee or "Burzyanka" in the conditions of beekeeping, the
Bashkir folk craft. The branch turned out to be the first zone in
the world to protect native wild bees.
The average monthly
temperature in January is −16 ° С, in June and July + 16 ° С.The
climate is moderate continental, sharply variable from year to year,
precipitation from 270 to 750 mm. The relief is low-mountainous.
Mixed deciduous and coniferous-deciduous forests cover 92 percent of
the territory.
The reserve is a nature conservation,
research, and environmental education institution. The staff
includes about 90 people, including 3 candidates of sciences and 2
postgraduate students, 5 researchers. The bibliography of the
reserve is more than 900 works, 53 scientific publications were
prepared in 2008. A comprehensive scientific report "Chronicle of
Nature" is prepared annually.
In the reserve, in the
conditions of artificial hollows: the sides and logs are inhabited
by 138 families of bees, in the apiaries of 242 families. State
security inspectors are also involved in borting. An urgent problem
is the protection of the bee gene pool from cross breeding, which
has led to the now banned import of foreign bees into the region.
For the stability of the Burzyanka population, it is necessary to
expand its range; for this, the Altyn-Solok (Golden Bort) nature
reserve was created in 1997, bee keeping is supported in the
adjacent territories, and the reserve expansion project was under
way. Skillful marketing of onboard honey made beekeeping profitable,
it began to return to the life of the Bashkirs.
The most famous representative of the
entomofauna is the Burzyan bee, to support the population of which
the Shulgan-Tash reserve was created.
There are 30 species of
fish, 5 amphibians, 6 reptiles, 206 birds, 61 species of mammals.
About 1700 species of invertebrates have been identified, of which
378 butterflies, 458 beetles. 31 species of animals are included in
the Red Book of the Russian Federation, and 67 species are included
in the Red Book of Bashkortostan. All typical forest species of
central Russia live here. The density of the brown bear is unusually
high. The fauna of birds is diverse. There are problems: the
European mink is being replaced by the American one in the region.
In view of the warming climate, the construction of the Yumaguzinsky
reservoir on the Belaya River, the habitat conditions for rheophilic
fish: taimen, trout, grayling are increasingly deteriorating.
The rich landscape mosaic determines the high diversity of the
flora. At the beginning of 2009, 816 species of higher vascular
plants, 184 mosses, 233 lichens, 117 species of fungi, 202 species
of algae and cyanobacteria were identified. 14 plant species belong
to the Red Book of Russia, 57 - Bashkortostan. Relic and endemic
species are about 10 percent of the total flora. The rarest plant
communities are relict spruce forests and mountain stony steppes.
The territory is bordered by Eastern European broad-leaved, light
coniferous pre-steppe and dark coniferous southern taiga forests.
Features:
The name of the reserve is mentioned in many myths
and legends of the Bashkirs - for example, in the epic of the
Bashkir people Ural-Batyr.
On the territory of the reserve
there is a unique karst Kapova cave, or Shulgan-Tash. The length of
all passages of the cave is more than 2.9 km. The cave has three
tiers; the Underground Shulgan River flows inside the cave, which
formed this cave.
In 1959, the zoologist of the reserve A.V.
Ryumin discovered rock paintings of the Paleolithic era in the
Kapova cave (Shulgan-Tash). Drawings are made mainly with ocher, a
natural pigment based on animal fat. Their age is about 18 thousand
years. Depicted are mammoths, horses and other animals, complex
signs, anthropomorphic figures. There are rare images of charcoal.