Sprawled across the mountain system where Russia, Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia come together is a vast and relatively pristine wild land, the Altai-Sayan Ecoregion. An ecoregion is a distinct territory defined by natural processes rather than political ones. Its borders are ecological, and its provinces are interconnected habitats.

The Altai-Sayan Ecoregion is one of the planet's most important strongholds of biodiversity - big enough and sufficiently intact to support most of its natural species. It covers over 386,000 square miles (an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined) in four countries. It includes three mountain ranges - the Altai, the Sayan, and the Mongolian Altai - and large tracts of the country surrounding them. Two of the ten largest river basins in the world - the Ob and the Yenesei - have their headwaters here. But not all the water flows to the sea.

The Khovd River, which has its genesis in the glaciers of Mongolia's Altai Tavn Bogd mountains, flows into the Great Lakes Basin, a depression with no outlet whose lush wetlands comprise the last great reed beds of central Asia.

The Mongolian section of the ecoregion includes three national parks (Lake Khovsgol, Khar Us Nuur, and Altai Tavan Bogd), seven strictly protected areas, and two nature reserves.

An effort is currently underway to coordinate management of wild areas throughout the ecoregion, in all four nations. The concept recognizes a fact well-known by any migratory animal of Central Asia: that the whole is greater than the sum of its separate parts.

(Courtesy of Conservationink.org, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA. Its mission is to support conservation efforts and environmental awareness in natural areas through the production and sale of published educational materials. Tusker Trail uses their excellent maps for our treks in Mongolia.Photographs © Ted Wood)