Darhat Valley, Saridag Mountains, Mongolia Photograph by Boojum Expeditions   Central Asia: Southern Russia into Mongolia Montane Grasslands and Shrublands   31,200 square miles (80,900 square kilometers) -- about the size of Maine Relatively Stable/Intact

· Mountain Meadows
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Mountain Meadows

If you were to venture between Lake Baikal and the Altai Mountains in Russia, you'd discover the Sayan Alpine Meadows and Tundra ecoregion--an area with an extraordinary diversity of plants and animals. During the last Ice Age, slow-moving glaciers forced many species from different mountainous regions into this area--giving this ecoregion its high diversity. Today, much of the region remains unaltered by humans. As a result, you can still encounter herds of rare and wild sheep called argali, large brown bears, and many other rare wildlife species.

Special Features

This ecoregion covers the high elevation habitats of the Sayan Mountains, beginning anywhere from 6,230 to 7,220 feet (1900 to 2200 m). A variety of vegetative communities fills the region, ranging from tallgrass subalpine meadow to grass alpine meadow to moss-lichen tundra. These different habitats, in turn, support a variety of different animals. Temperatures here are cold, and snowcover is thick.

	Mountain hares are brown in summer and white in the winter, but, strangely enough, they're sometimes called blue hares!

Wild Side

Throughout this mountainous ecoregion, argali sheep scramble up and down the hillsides, mountain hares nibble on grasses, brown bears feast on berries, and snow leopards stealthily stalk their prey. Other mammals in the region include red foxes, Siberian weasels, red deer, and even reindeer (caribou). Such rare birds as golden eagles and Montagu’s harriers may be spotted in the sky. Altai snowcocks move up and down the mountainside with the snowline and nest among high elevation stones and boulders. The more common birds include water pipits, Altai accentors, and red-billed choughs.

Cause for Concern

The vegetative communities of this ecoregion are very fragile. Many are protected in national parks, and many are quite difficult for humans to reach. Still, trampling by hikers and overgrazing by livestock are concerns for this ecoregion. Other threats include collection of plants for medicinal purposes and illegal hunting of wildlife.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.