Kazakhstan strengthens lake system protection

Kazakhstan strengthens lake system protection

    
January 2007  - Kazakhstan has 
strengthened protection for a large lake system important to 
migrating waterbirds by acceding to the Ramsar Convention, an 
international treaty for the protection of wetlands. 
Kazakhstan's first Ramsar site, the Tengiz and Korgalzhyn 
Lakes in Akmola Oblast, is a shallow lake system with a mix of 
fresh, salty and brackish water bodies characteristic of 
northern Kazakhstan. The lakes are situated in a flat steppe 
landscape and grass oceans covering the land to the horizon. 
"Korgalzhyn and Tengiz Lakes are particularly important areas 
for migratory birds," said Valery Khrokov, president of 
Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity in 
Kazakhstan, ACBK, has been working towards Kazakhstan’s 
accession to the Convention. 
Korgalzhyn Lakes from the air (Photo by Martin Lenk courtesy 
Ramsar) 
"Accession to the Ramsar Convention will help us ensure that 
our efforts to conserve them fit into a global strategy for 
conserving wetland birds," said Khrokov. 
The instrument of accession signed by Kazakhstan's Minister of 
Foreign Affairs Kassymzhomart Tokaev was received by the 
UNESCO Director-General on January 2007. The Convention 
will enter into force for Kazakhstan on May 2, when the 
country will become the 154th Party to the treaty. 
The Tengiz-Korgalzhyn Lake System was first designated a 
wetland of international importance by the former Soviet Union 
in October 1976. As re-defined by Kazakhstan's authorities, 
this protected site is now expanded. 
It includes the nature reserve itself around the lakeshore 
area, roughly 259,000 hectares with about the same boundaries 
as the Soviet-era designation, plus a two kilometer buffer 
zone around it, for a total of 353,341 hectares. 
The Tengiz-Korgalzhyn lakes have been a nature reserve since 
1968, but the adjacent lake systems of the Tengiz lake basin 
have not been strictly protected and will be added as clusters 
to this nomination at a later stage. 
An enormous number of migrating birds stop over in the region. 

On the mud islands of Lake Tengiz the northernmost colony of 
greater flamingo, Phoenicopterus ruber, reaches up to 14,000 
breeding pairs. 
Dalmatian pelicans, Pelicanus crispus (Photo courtesy Ege U. 
Birdwatching Society) 
The Korgalzhyn Lakes harbor about 10 percent of the world 
population of the Dalmatian Pelican, Pelicanus crispus, with 
over 500 breeding pairs nesting in the vast reed beds. 
White-headed ducks, Oxyura leucocephala, rest and breed at the 
fresh and brackish lakes. In autumn they can be observed in 
numbers of up to 4,000 birds in the protected area, 
representing 30 to 40 percent of the world population. 
"Conserving migratory birds relies heavily on the involvement 
and commitment of all of the countries in which these birds 
reside," said Dave Pritchard, international treaties adviser 
at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which 
functions as BirdLife International in the UK. 
"Kazakhstan has a huge wealth of wetland habitats. That they 
have joined Ramsar is great news for bird conservation in the 
region," Pritchard said. 
The main breeding grounds of white-headed ducks like this one 
are thought to be in northern Kazakhstan and southern Russia. 
(Photo courtesy IUCN Threatened Waterfowl Specialist Group) 
The Convention on Wetlands, signed in Ramsar, Iran in 1971, is 
an intergovernmental treaty which provides the framework for 
national action and international cooperation for the 
conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. 
Governments that are Parties to the Convention designate 
wetlands for inclusion in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of 
International Importance. 
This means that the Convention is concerned with the 
management of entire river basins, not just with isolated 
sites. 
A management plan for the the Tengiz and Korgalzhyn Lakes is 
under development under a project of the Global Environment 
Facility and the UN Development Programme office in the 
capital Astana. 
There is an associated nature museum and visitors' center 
which attracts groups from Astana, but only scientific tourism 
and research is permitted. Tourism within the reserve itself, 
as distinct from that in the buffer zone, is not expected to 
increase. 
The Ramsar Convention has become one of the most important 
global mechanisms for BirdLife partner organizations in their 
national work, said Pritchard. Many partners have contributed 
to the designation of Important Bird Areas as Wetlands of 
International Importance in their countries, he said, and many 
help to monitor these sites.