The unique state nature bios­phere reserve “Ubsunur Basin” is one of the key ter­ri­to­ries of the Altai-Sayan ecore­gion. Which, in turn, is includ­ed in the list of “Glob­al 200” — a list of vir­gin or lit­­tle-changed ecore­gions of the world, which con­tain more than 90% of the plan­et’s bio­di­ver­si­ty. Sim­ply put, this is one of the few places on the plan­et where you can feel like you were 500‑1000 (or even more) years ago.

Ubsunur Basin is char­ac­ter­ized by a rare com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent ele­ments of fau­na, 83 species of mam­mals are found here. The Red Book of Rus­sia and the reserve include the red wolf, snow leop­ard (irbis), Altai moun­tain sheep (argali) and dzeren. In 2003, the basin was added to the UNESCO World Her­itage List. The fol­low­ing clus­ters are con­sid­ered spe­cial­ly pro­tect­ed nat­ur­al areas of the Ubsunur Bios­phere Reserve: Kara-Khol, Mongun-Taiga, Khan-Deer, Oruku-Shy­­naa, Aryskan­nyg, Ubsu-Nur, Tsug­­eer-Els, Ular and Yamaa­lyg. As well as nat­ur­al areas of repub­li­can sig­nif­i­cance: Ayan­gatin­sky, Bal­gazyn­sky (bio­log­i­cal), Derzik­sky, Dur­gen­sky, Ka’k­sky, Ondum­sky, Sut-Khol­sky, Tapsin­sky, Ush-Beldirsky, Khutin­sky, Chagy­taysky (bio­log­i­cal and hydro­log­i­cal), Chaa-Khol­sky, Shan­sky, Sheminsky and Eerbek­sky.