Ussuri Preserve

Ussuri Preserve 

(full name, V. L. Komarov Ussuri Preserve), a preserve located in Ussuri and Shkotovsk raions, Primor’e Krai, RSFSR, near the upper Komarovka and Artemovka rivers and their tributaries, which originate in the western spurs of Sikhote-Alin.

The Ussuri Preserve was created in 1932 on the initiative of the Soviet botanist V. L. Komarov, to preserve the mountain-forest landscape of the southern Primor’e. As of 1977, it covered an area of 40,454 hectares (ha) and consisted of two forest plots: Zapovednaia (16,600 ha) and Verkhnemaiskaia (23,800 ha); before 1973 it included only Zapovednaia.

About 650 species of higher plants grow in the preserve, and cedar and fir-broad-leaved forests have been preserved unchanged. Many trees (cedar, fir, and elm) have attained remarkable longevity (400–500 years) and giant dimensions (heights of 45 m and diameters of 2 m at chest level). The flora is rich in relict species, some of its 41 species being the Japanese yew, the hornbeam Carpinus cordata, the fir Abies holophylla, the pine Pinus funeralis, Chinese pine, Yeddo spruce, Araliaceae (including ginseng), and many ferns (including Coniogramma fraxinea).

Animals include the Ussuri tiger, Manchurian red deer, sika deer, roe deer, wild boar, Asiatic black bear, leopard, lynx, yellow-throated marten, badger, squirrel, mink, Siberian ferret, Siberian chipmunk, otter, giant shrew, common European cuckoo, small cuckoo, Hodgson’s hawk cuckoo, Siberian blue-and-white flycatcher, blue thrush, and Onychodactylus fischeri. Insects include giant longhorn beetle (Callipogon beetle), weevil, Geometridae, Ussuri swallowtail butterfly, silkworms, hawk-moths, and the giant silk moth.

Techniques for the cultivation of ginseng on plantations have been developed at the Ussuri Preserve.

A. D. GUREV