Open-air museum opens in Almaty region

Almaty, October 31, 2009 (Khabar) - Officials of the Almaty state nature reserve have presented an open-air nature zone. There are more than 300 inhabitants of the Zailiyskiy Alatau mountains in the nature museum, such as bears, wild boars, wolves, roes, eagles, golden eagles, and eagle-owls. This is the only place in the country which is a habitat of the snow leopards.

Zhumakhan Yenkebayev, director of Almaty state nature reserve:
- About six thousand sightseers have visited our nature reserve to date. They are mainly represented by children from the Almaty region, Talgar district and Almaty. International eco-tourism isn’t yet developed, but we’re thinking about it. We’ve arranged the flora and we’re planning to make sculptures of animals which can be found in the zone.

A seminar on eco-tourism was held after a presentation of the landscape exposition.

Vadim Ni, director of “Asian-American partnership” fund:
- First of all, it is necessary to define the criteria and projects related to eco-tourism and support them by financing through the budget and promoting tours which correspond to environmentally-friendly tourism. There will also be training courses on how to organize them and for preparing tour operators to work with the population.

According to specialists, in order to attract more tourists to the Zailiyskiy Alatau Mountains, it is necessary to enlighten travellers from all over the world on the fact that there’s a place in Kazakhstan where two clear-cut geographic zones are situated within a distance of only one hundred kilometres: from the glaciers of Zailiyskiy Alatau’s Talgar Peak to the Ili sands.