Sikhote-Alin is a temperate zone, though species typical of northern taiga (such as reindeer and the Ussuri brown bear) coexist with the Amur tiger, Amur leopard, and Asiatic black bear.

In the 1910s and 1920s, Sikhote-Alin was extensively explored by Russian geographer and naturalist Vladimir Arsenyev (1872–1930), who described his adventures in several books, notably Dersu Uzala (1923), which in 1975 was turned into an Oscar-winning film by Akira Kurosawa.

On February 12, 1947, one of the largest meteorite showers in recent history occurred in the mountains range.

The Sikhote-Alin meteorite exploded in the atmosphere as it fell, raining many tons of metal on an elliptical region about 1.3 square kilometres (0.50 sq mi) in area.

In 2001, UNESCO placed "Central Sikhote-Alin" onto the World Heritage List, citing its importance for "the survival of endangered species such as the scaly-sided (Chinese) merganser, Blakiston's fish-owl and the Amur tiger".