Wildlife of Russia

The wildlife of Russia inhabits terrain that extends across 12 time zones and from the tundra region in the far north to the Caucasus Mountains and prairies in the south, including temperate forests which cover 70% of the country.

[1] Geographically, the tundra habitat lies in a zone extending from the northern coast 60 to 420 kilometres (37 to 260 mi) to the south; this gradually transforms into the extensive and dense forests of the taiga that include a large part of Siberia and then into the gently sloping steppe land with trees only on the river banks.

Three distinctive zones are the Caucasus in southern Russia, the active volcanic region of Kamchatka in the far northeast; and Ussuriland in the extreme southeast; in the latter, the indigenous animals and vegetation are akin to South East Asia rather than Siberia.

[5] The tundra region is entirely within the Arctic Circle and is the most inhospitable terrain with permafrost extending to a depth of 1,450 metres (4,760 ft).

The prominent land form here is the Sikhote-Alin range that extends for more than 1,000 kilometres (620 mi), running parallel to the coast.

Zapovedniks (pronounced: Zap-o-VED-nik) are strictly protected scientific nature reserves under IUCN category I.

[10][11] The regions and the number of reserves in each of then are: eight in the Arctic region of Russia, twenty in the Kola-Karelian & Eastern European Forest, thirteen in the Eastern European Forest-Steppe, Steppe & Caspian Semi-Desert, nine in Ural Mountains, six in the Caucasus (also Prielbrusye National Park and Sochinsky National Park, four in the Western Siberian Forest, four in Central Siberia, eight in Altai-Sayansky, four in Baikal (and Zabaykalsky National Park), four in Zabaikal, fifteen in Amur-Sakhalin and five in Kamchatka-Okhotsk Sea.

[10] UNESCO listed World Heritage Sites in these regions are: Virgin Komi Forests of the Urals, the Lake Baikal, the Volcanoes of Kamchatka, the Altai Mountains, the Western Caucasus, the Curonian Spit (the Kurshskaya Kosa National Park), the Central Sikhote-Alin, Uvs Lake Basin on the border with Mongolia, and the Wrangel Island Reserve in the Chukchi Sea in the Russian Far East.

[1] The ice fields of tundra are covered on the top by lichens, mosses, grasses and flowers, which for nine months are buried under snow.

In the Volga Delta, Caspian lotus flowers in pink and white spread across the water during the summer.

Other species present include Arctic fox, seals, walruses (near Chukotka), polar bears and whales.

[7] Spawning salmon are abundant in the rivers of peninsular Kamchatka on account of enrichment of the region by volcanic ash.