Bulunkul and Yashilkul lakes and mountains Important Bird Area

The Important Bird Area (IBA) has a complicated topography of sparsely vegetated mountain slopes and broad highland valleys containing the large freshwater lakes of Bulunkul, Yashilkul and other wetlands.

In the north there are scree-sloped mountain ranges cut by the gorges of the Kichik, Marjanay and Okjilga rivers flowing into Yashilkul.

The central lakes are surrounded by sand and pebble plains, marshes, wet meadows and peat bogs.

[1] The site was identified as an IBA by BirdLife International because it supports significant numbers of the populations of various bird species, either as residents or as breeding or passage migrants.

These include Himalayan snowcocks, bar-headed geese, ruddy shelducks, common mergansers, saker falcons, Himalayan vultures, eastern imperial eagles, lesser sand plovers, brown-headed gulls, yellow-billed choughs, Hume's larks, sulphur-bellied warblers, wallcreepers, white-winged redstarts, white-winged snowfinches, water pipits, black-headed mountain finches, Caucasian great rosefinches and red-fronted rosefinches.