Preparation of the Magadansky Reserve World Heritage nomination is resumedThe work on the preparation of the Magadansky Reserve's nomination dossier has been resumed after a 4-year break. Agencies participating in the project are the Natural Heritage Protection Fund, the Institute of Geography RAS, the Technical University of Dresden and the Russian Research Institute for Cultural and Natural Heritage. The Magadansky Reserve natural site is nominated for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is planned to send the nomination file to the World Heritage Centre before the end of 2008. The property's nomination dossier has already been compiled once. The work was carried out in 2001-2003 by the Natural Heritage Protection Fund, the Institute of Geography RAS and the Technical University of Dresden with the assistance of the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. In 2004 the Magadansky Reserve natural site was included in the Tentative List of Cultural and Natural Sites to be nominated by the Russian Federation for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In 2007, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources made a decision to submit to the World Heritage Centre during 2008 a complete kit of documentation for the Magadansky Reserve natural property. The decision was influenced by a request of N.N. Dudov, the Governor of the Magadanskaya Oblast', concerning the nomination of the Reserve for the status of World Heritage site. Now the previously prepared information should be considerably updated and reorganized in conformity with a new nomination format that is valid since February 1, 2005. Brief info on the Magadansky Reserve nominating property The Nature Reserve consists of 6 isolated clusters representing the richness of landscapes of the Magadansky Region as well as the entire range of ecosystems typical for the northern Far East taiga that still remain undisturbed here. 729 vascular plant species, 32 fish species, 173 bird and 39 mammal species are found within the area of the Reserve. Those clusters of the Reserve that lie in the coastal zone of the Sea of Okhotsk contain the Northern Pacific's largest bird rookeries. Among the bird species found in the Reserve there are many of those included into the IUCN Red Data Book: Steller's sea eagle, osprey, peregrine falcon and a small population of fishing owls nest in the Reserve, and golden eagle, white-tailed eagle and Bewick's swan are encountered in the Reserve's area. A relic Siberian spruce forest has been found in the Yamskoy cluster, that means it is located 1,000 km away from its primary habitats in Yakutia and in the Khabarovsky Region. The largest of the Yamskiye Islands is known as the northernmost reproductive rookery of the Eared seal in the Sea of Okhotsk. |