Altai Preserve

Altai Preserve 

a state preserve in the northeastern Altai Mountains, near the Teletskoe Lake in Altai Krai, RSFSR. It has an area of 863,800 hectares (1967). The preserve was created to protect the nature of the taiga and high-mountain tundra of the Southern Siberi. The mountains display high-altitude vegetation zones. The taiga with dark coniferous fir, cedar, and cedar larch trees is followed by a belt of subalpine thin forests, which is followed at still higher elevations by an alpine belt with brushwork tundras, alpine meadows, and detritus, lichen, and rocky tundras. The most characteristic animals are the maral, the elk, the musk deer, the Siberian ibex, the roe, the brown bear, the sable, the badger, the squirrel, the chipmunk, the kolinsky, the snow leopard, the snow cock, the willow ptarmigan, the ptarmigan, and the wood, hazel, and black grouse.