Nature of Kazakhstan: wildlife, plants, rivers and zones on charyn.kz

Animals of Kazakhstan: how many species and who lives where

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kazakhstan has around 180 mammal species, 500 birds, 52 reptiles, 12 amphibians and more than 100 fish, according to Wikipedia’s fauna article. Those are encyclopedia figures and no official census exists: the Forestry and Wildlife Committee says exact counts are impossible for most species.

The comeback stories

The most interesting recent chapter is the return of lost species. Kulans died out here in the 1930s, and the Committee now reports 4,614.

Birdwatching in Kazakhstan: species, migration and where to go

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kazakhstan has more than 500 recorded bird species, and about 400 breed here, according to the OSME country profile. The country sits on the Central Asian flyway, used by more than 600 species according to BirdLife. Plan around spring and autumn passage.

Target birds

OSME singles out Kazakhstan for Dalmatian pelican, steppe eagle, demoiselle crane, sociable lapwing, and black and white-winged larks. Other targets include the relict gull, white-headed duck, Pallas’s sandgrouse and the Ili form of Pander’s ground jay, a subspecies found only here. Fifty-nine birds are on the national Red Book list.

Flamingos in Kazakhstan: the world's northernmost colony

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Flamingos in Kazakhstan nest mainly on Lake Tengiz, at the centre of the Korgalzhyn reserve. The Ramsar site description calls the colony on its mud islands the northernmost in the world, at up to 14,000 breeding pairs. The reserve’s deputy director places it on small islands off the eastern shore.

What to expect on a visit

Place	When	Reality check
Korgalzhyn, Lake Tengiz	Summer	Guide and route needed; the “Flamingo” route is 155 km; the colony is far off
Akzhaiyk, Ural delta	May and September	Stopover on passage; entry procedure unconfirmed
Lake Karakol, Mangystau	Early October	One press report in The Astana Times; no guarantee

Stay away from colony islands and do not fly a drone. Bring binoculars. For more on planning, see birdwatching in Kazakhstan and Kazakhstan’s nature reserves.

Kazakhstan nature calendar: what happens each month

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Something is happening in Kazakhstan’s wild places every month: seals pup on Caspian ice in winter, tulips open in the south in spring and larches turn gold in the Altai in autumn. The table lists a main event for each month, its source and where to go. Treat the months as a guide, as dates move every year.

The twelve months

Month	What happens	Where	Source
January	Seal pups on the ice (late in the month)	Northern Caspian, not approachable	Our place page
February	Seal pups; snow leopards lower in winter	Caspian, Ile-Alatau	Our place page
March	First tulips, apricot blossom, marmots wake	Aksu-Zhabagly, Shymkent, Korgalzhyn	The Astana Times, Tengrinews, Kazpravda
April	Tulips, saiga count, apple blossom begins	Altyn-Emel, Ile-Alatau	The Astana Times, Kazinform, Tengrinews
May	Poppies, saiga calving, bird passage	Poppy fields, Akzhaiyk	Zakon.kz, Tengrinews
June	Tulip season ends	Mountains, north	The Astana Times
July	Sunflowers begin; marmots go to sleep (late)	North, East Kazakhstan	Tengrinews, Kazpravda
August	Sunflowers finish	North Kazakhstan	Tengrinews
September	Autumn bird passage, golden ash grove	Akzhaiyk, Charyn	Our place pages
October	Golden forests, flamingos through Mangystau (early)	Kolsai, Markakol	Informburo, We Project, The Astana Times
November	Lake Zaysan starts to freeze	Zaysan	Our place page
December	Winter season in the mountains	Where to go in winter	Our place page

“Our place page” means the source is cited on the linked page.

Kazakhstan's Red Book: the 217 listed animals and where to see them

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kazakhstan’s Red Book is the national register of rare and endangered species, and its legal backbone is the list in Government Decree No. 1034. The animal list was updated on 17 August 2026 and names 217 species and subspecies. Plants have their own list of 387.

A book and a legal list

The name covers two documents. One is the scientists’ book, with descriptions and maps, which has run to five editions since 1978. The other is the government list, and that is the one with legal force: being on it brings protection automatically. Article 339 of the Criminal Code covers illegal killing, possession or sale of listed species and destruction of their habitat.

Natural zones of Kazakhstan: from forest-steppe to desert

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kazakhstan’s natural zones run in bands from north to south across the plains: forest-steppe, steppe, semi-desert and desert. Study notes put plains at 86 percent of the country. In the southern and eastern mountains, zones change with altitude instead.

The zones at a glance

We show two sets of shares because the sources disagree. Neither adds up to 100 percent, since neither counts mountains and other land separately. Cite the source if you use a number.

Poppy fields in Kazakhstan: when they bloom and how to find them

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Poppy fields in Kazakhstan flower from late April to mid May across Almaty, Zhambyl and Turkistan regions. Each field lasts about two weeks. Fields shift with seed spread, rainfall and soil, so nobody can give you a permanent location.

Almaty Region in spring: wild poppies with mountains on the horizon. Никита Михайловский · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

How to find a field

Start watching from late April. Tengrinews suggests checking social media for current locations.
Try the reported directions: the Kapshagay highway near Baiserke, the Kulja highway, beyond Burundai, Shengeldy, Ili district. These are past years’ spots.
Go early or late in the day, as a Kazinform photographer advises.
Keep driving past the first field. A photographer quoted by Tengrinews says crowds gather there and quieter fields lie further on.

A taxi or hired car is the practical way to do this, since fields are off the highway and change location. Kazinform once reported thin flowering in the usual places, so there is no guarantee.

Red Book plants of Kazakhstan: 387 listed, from wild apple to tulips

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kazakhstan’s legal list of rare plants is part of Government Decree No. 1034 and has 387 entries. Flowering plants account for 364 of them. The other 23 are ferns, clubmosses, conifers, mosses, 13 fungi and one lichen. The plant list dates from 2012, while the animal list was updated in 2026, so keep the years apart when comparing them.

Plants you may recognise

No.	Plant	Scientific name	Note
5	Schrenk’s spruce	Picea schrenkiana f. prostrata	Only the creeping form is listed
8	Sacred lotus	Nelumbo nucifera
113–114	Wild apples	Malus niedzwetzkyana, M. sieversii	Sievers apple grows on the Almaty foothills
117	Wild apricot	Armeniaca vulgaris
165	Pistachio	Pistacia vera
213	Sogdian ash	Fraxinus sogdiana	Charyn’s relict grove
317	Greig’s tulip	Tulipa greigii	One of 18 listed tulips
352	Lady’s slipper orchid	Cypripedium calceolus

What this means if you are writing about it: name the species and cite the decree number. Popular articles often repeat figures that the list does not support.

Rivers of Kazakhstan: the longest, their basins and where to see them

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The longest rivers in Kazakhstan are the Irtysh (4,248 km), the Ishim, also called Yesil (2,450 km), the Ural, or Zhaiyk (2,428 km), the Syr Darya (about 2,212 km) and the Tobol (1,591 km). These are 2023 figures from the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation. All five cross a border, so total length and length inside Kazakhstan are different numbers.

Length table

Sources agree closely on total length, but not on length inside Kazakhstan: two press reports of the same ministry statement disagree for the Irtysh and the Ishim. If you are citing this, name the source and year.

Saiga antelope in Kazakhstan: numbers, range and can you see one

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wikipedia puts about 99 percent of the world’s saiga antelope in Kazakhstan. The aerial count of April 2026 estimated about 4.689 million, against about 21,500 in 2003. Specialists stress that this is a statistical estimate, not a head count.

Saiga in Kazakhstan, thousands

1,200 1974 21.5 2003 137.5 2012 295.5 2015 108.3 2016 1,915 2023 2,833.6 2024 4,689 2026

Committee slides (2025), 2026 aerial count

The rise was not smooth. Numbers more than halved between 2015 and 2016. And the Committee’s own 2025 slides forecast 6 million for 2026, well above the actual count. Specialists point to culling and hard winters.

Wild tulips in Kazakhstan: where and when they bloom

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kazakhstan is often called the home of the wild tulip. The Astana Times reports nearly 40 species here out of 100 to 120 worldwide, including 12 found nowhere else, and credits three of them (Greig’s, Kaufmann’s and Schrenk’s) as the origin of 75 percent of cultivated varieties. Bloom begins in late March in the warm south.

Where and when to go

Nobody can promise dates in advance. Use this table to pick a month, then ask the park office.