[1] It is named for the ancient village of Visim, which was home to the Russian writer Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak, who wrote about rural life in the Urals.

The core reserve is roughly rectangular, 20 km across, with much larger buffer zones (where hunting and fishing are prohibited) to the north.

This climate is characterized by large swings in temperature, both diurnally and seasonally, with mild summers and cold, snowy winters.

[7] The Visim Reserve serves as a reference for representative plant communities of the southern Urals mountain taiga.

[8] The reserve experienced extensive windfall damage during storms in 1995, and forest fires in 1998 and 2010, that left only 1,500 hectares in a pristine old-growth state.

[2] The animal life of the reserve is typical of the Mid-Urals taiga: moose, wolf, bear, rabbit, beaver, marten, ermine, weasel, shrews and other rodents.