In May 2022, 35 elks were brought to the national reserve ‘Besh-Tash’ in Talas region from Altai. Elks, like snow leopards, are totem animals of the Kyrgyz and are deeply respected by the people. Therefore, the arrival of elks was taken very positively. But in terms of the science, it was not so amazing. The Altai subspecies of elks may become the reason for disappearance of the Tien Shan elk, the indigenous inhabitant of the lands of Kyrgyzstan.
Besh-Tash
The Besh-Tash National Reserve is spread out on 13 thousand hectares of slopes and valleys of the Talas’s Ala-Too, southward of the regional centre Talas, and contains the gorges of Besh-Tash, Kolba, Kumush-Tag and Ur- Maral. The administration does not let the cattle of locals in the park for grazing until June so that the hayseed could remain in the ground for the next year.
On the morning of May 5, we went to Besh-Tash Reserve to see the elks delivered from Altai. According to director Samar Uzgenov, last time they were seen in Talas was in the 50s of last century. At the ex-governor’s initiative, 35 elks from Altai were delivered to Kyrgyzstan in May 2022. Alyans Altyn Company provided financial support and contributed 2.5 million som (28.5 thousand dollars) to this campaign.
The entrance to the park for tourists is paid, but it is not the season now and there are almost no tourists.
The new director of the park was appointed in June 2023, and according to local activists, he quickly arranged all the matters. Being a forest ranger by education, with a major in ‘Forestry’, and having worked for over 20 years in forest management, Uzgenov has managed to arrange all the matters in the reserve.
“The reserve had been neglected before his was appointed, and once he came he immediately put it right, started to plant trees, launched new projects. It’s a pleasure now to come to the reserve,” said activist Kalyibek Razakulbek uulu.
The Talas regional office of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision of the Kyrgyz Republic is in charge of the elks.
“It is a long way, so five elks have died on their way to Kyrgyzstan. One has broken a leg here and died. Two more have fallen from the rock. We believe that the animals were fleeing from snow leopards. So, only 28 remained. But last year, 8 elks calved. Now, according to our estimates, there are 35 elks in the mountains. They graze freely, and have adapted. We constantly take care of them – provide them with combined feed in winter, and certainly with salt. They are on the loose now, and we watch them every day. We want more of them. When there are more of them, we will spread them across Kyrgyzstan,” the director says while we drive along the rocky road and enter deep into the reserve.
River Besh-Tash, with a widely spread network of tributaries fed by permanent glaciers of the Talas ridge, runs through the entire territory of the park. The park area is cut by gullies, with juniper trees on slopes, and sparse spruces above.
Besh-Tash has become the most favourable area with mild weather and abundant grasses for the elks. The only thing that local rangers fear is snow leopards living in the same mountains.
We saw an enclosed section along the slope near the river after half an hour drive from the main entrance. Elks inhabited this place before they went wild. A house of an elk specialist, who is in charge of all the elks and takes care of them, is located nearby.
Bright green Alpine meadows start above the border of the forest-meadow zone. You can feel a fresh breath of glaciers in this area. We drove to the homonymous lakes right near the glaciers to see the animals.
The name ‘Besh-Tash’, translated as ‘Five Rocks’, originates from an interesting legend. In the times of caravan routes, a road, which was used by merchants to transport goods from north to south and back, passed along these routes long ago. Outlaws used this road to rob people and had the reputation of the most notorious. Once of the robbed ones recognised the sons of a fellow villager in them and told him about it. The old father wailed over it and wanted to take the same path together with other villagers and see if his children would hit on them. When they approached the place that is called Besh-Karakchy now, they were hit by the outlaws and one of them wanted to kick the father off the horse and grabbed him by his clothes. But the father recognised him and pronounced a curse upon his sons, ‘He raised hands to me. I wish five of you become cursed outlaws.’ So, his sons turned into balbal (stone statues made in special artistic styles of nomads).
“This is the story told by the locals. If looking from afar, the rocks look like five men wearing kalpaks. Original balbals were taken by the Hermitage for an exhibition and were never returned. So, locals decided to place ordinary rocks to replace them,” said Samar Uzgenov while we were rising up the valley.
In search of the elks, we reached the biggest of eight lakes in the reservoir – Lake Besh-Tash located 3,000 metres above the sea level. The lake is 28 metres deep, and it is still covered with ice in May. We saw the elks from afar, on our way back, for a moment, and then they faded from our view.
The project is sabotaging the nature of Kyrgyzstan
An amazing story of the travel of elks from Altai, which is historically close to the Kyrgyz, turned out to be not as vivid as it seems to be at first sight.
Askar Davletbakov, head of the laboratory of vertebrates of the Institute of Biology at the National Academy of Sciences, doctor of biological sciences, is totally against the release of the animals. According to the biologist, the whole Besh-Tash reserve is at risk now. The Western Tien Shan, Uzun-Akhmat, Sary-Chelek, Padysh-Ata reserve, which have natural boundaries with the Besh-Tash reserve, are the habitats of Tien Shan elks, the unique subspecies of elks living only in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.
“They [Altai elks] have been at loose for two years now,” the academician said. “The youngsters who were already born will be released to the forest and will mingle with our local subspecies. It should not be allowed. At all. Hybrids in the nature form only in the territories where their habitats meet each other and they do not affect the general population. And here we have an alien subspecies delivered right to the centre of the local habitat. This is a disaster. Siberia has different habitat, specific diseases. We risk getting new unknown diseases, and our subspecies of elks do not have immunity against them. Every subspecies is unique in its habitat, and there are no more like that anywhere. Every region has its own subspecies. It can damage everything morphologically, genetically, physically. They can oust local Tien Shan elks. And the whole project is in breach of our laws – according to the hunting industry law and biological diversity convention, it is strictly forbidden to
bring alien species and subspecies and release them to nature. The Tien Shan subspecies of elks is on the Red List, while the Altai subspecies is a game species.
The authors of the project to reintroduce elks applied to the National Academy of Sciences before its implementation and were licensed to start the process for two purposes: unossified antlers and hunting but only in a closed area. But, according to Davletbakov, the elks that were delivered somehow slipped out of the reserve. The scientist raised the alarm immediately – he wrote letters to the ministry of nature, namely to the then minister Dinara Kutmanova asking her to take immediate measures regarding the elks from Altai: they should be caught and brought back to closed areas, or team culling must be organised. Since 2023, he applied to the current minister twice from the date of his appointment. But nothing was done.
According to him, the ministry issues licences for such business projects, but creates obstacles to the development of the national science.
“We wanted to place transmitters on our eyases to track down their paths, the distances they travel, where they prey, etc. But they do not give us licences, while the whole world uses new technologies to track down the species that inhabit their territories. They prevent us from doing science. Some officers of the ministry of nature ruin our national science, and do not give licences for important projects, yet they allow importation and release of alien subspecies to nature,” Davletbakov said.
Reintroduction of elks to Western Tien Shan
In 2015-2018, Kyrgyzstan implemented the project ‘Reintroduction of elks to Western Tien Shan’, when Tien Shan elks were brought from the Naryn State Reserve to Avletim location in Aksy district, Dzhalal-Abad region. The author of the project, Gamal Soronkulov, with the support of the Christensen Fund, involved the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to funding, which contributed 30 thousand dollars. Being the villager of Ur-Maral, Soronkulov has dreamed of getting the elks back to the mountains of Talas for years.
“In the Soviet time, topographers, cartographers misspelled the name of Ur- Maral. ‘Uyur-Maral’ means a group of elks, the former means ‘To hit elks’. I have made a research and asked the elderly. There were many elks near the tributaries of River Uyur-Maral in the location of Kara-Koyun. And according to older-timers, 11 last elks were exterminated by the Red Army men in 1926.Since then, we’ve had no elks. By the early 21 st century, elks remained only in the Naryn Reserve, then they appeared in Chon-Kemin (Chui region) and Ak- Suu (Issyk-Kul region),” said Soronkulov.
In 2009, Sooronkulov wrote a project to reintroduce elks to the Western Tien Shan being inspired by the ‘White Ship’ by Ch. Aitmatov, where Nurgazy the boy waited for his father and the elks. Askar Davletbakov helped him to substantiate the project scientifically and after 7 years of searching for funding, he finally received the permit from the state.
Soronkulov managed to find funding by chance, as he admitted. He met a representative of the Christensen Fund at a conference and shared his idea. With their help, Soronkulov managed to reach out to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which contributed the money. But the main obstacle was to get a permit from the state.
“At the end of 2015, I could implement the project. Back then, Almazbek Atambaev wanted to invite the actor to the Nomad Games, but all know that he comes only to the countries, where the projects are being implemented. I was willing to invite him to have a licence for transportation instead. So, I got the licence. Nine elks were transported from the Naryn State Reserve to Aksy district, Avletim natural landmark. In fact, I did the state’s job,” Soronkulov said.
The concept of the project to reintroduce elks from Altai to Talas also belongs to the ecologist. The original name of the project is ‘Following the trail of Mother Deer’, who, according to the legend, saved the children from death by taking them from Altai to Issyk-Kul, where the clan of ‘bugu’ originates from. The specialist found an elk farm at Altai, got in touch with local biologists, wanted to make a genetic test and consulted Askar Davletbakov. In case of genetic variation of elks, the project had an option to keep them in open-air cages. The selected plot was the very Uyur-Maral, which would be perfect for the elks. Searching for funding, Soronkulov resorted to the governor of Talas region, and presented the project to him. But the idea was implemented without the author’s participation.
“Two years ago, on May 1, I learned that elks from Altai were brought here. The only thing I managed to do was change the territory of the open-air cage. Local rangers called me and said they were making the enclosure. I called Dinara Kutmanova (ex-head of the ministry of nature) at night and said that the plot they wanted to use for the elks was absolutely unsuitable and they would die there. Even she, despite her being the minister, was not aware of the transportation of elks. The elks were delivered without permit. The law was violated, the project was implemented without the scientific support. Later I learned that the elks somehow could escape from the enclosure,” Soronkulov felt at a loss because of his powerlessness.
They wanted the best, but it turned out to be as usual
Introduction happened instead of the expected reintroduction – different subspecies of one species were brought to the habitat of local animals. The mixture of subspecies can happen naturally on border areas, where there is no threat to the bulk of animals. While bringing different subspecies to the centre of the habitat poses a threat to the local subspecies.
Kyrgyzstan implemented introduction projects earlier, when local flora and fauna were damaged, and sometimes even disappeared. Rainbow trout, which was released to Lake Issyk-Kul from 2007 to 2011, almost totally eradicated the stock of Issyk-Kul dace. In 2019, it was reported that the American mink extirpated musk beavers, pheasants and hares at Issyk-Kul.
The imported Altai elks reproduce actively and go deep into the mountains. Appearance of the elks in the natural park is a positive event. But it is a matter of time how it will affect the gene pool of local Tien Shan elks.