Western Caucasus
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How it came to be
The Western Caucasus covers about 275,000 hectares at the far western end of the Caucasus range, some 50 km north-east of the Black Sea. Its alpine pastures are described as grazed only by wild animals, and its undisturbed mountain forests, running from the lowlands to the subalpine zone, have no match in Europe.
At its core is the Caucasus Nature Reserve, created in 1924 as the Caucasian Bison Reserve, chiefly to save the mountain subspecies of the European bison. That subspecies had fallen to 500 to 600 animals by 1917 and 50 by 1921, and in 1927 poachers killed the last three in the wild.
In the 1940s hybrids of European and American bison were released into the reserve and spread across its northern part. The reserve became a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1979 and, together with parts of Sochi National Park (created in 1983) and smaller areas, was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1999. In 2008 it was renamed after its founder, the biologist Shaposhnikov.
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