Sitnikovsky Nature Reserve was established in 1987 in Borsky District, 2 km southeast of Kiselikha station, on the watershed between the Vezloma and the Linda.
Its area is 2.1 thousand hectares. The reserve lies about 8 km north of the town of Bor; access to its territory is unrestricted, but because of the abundance of peat, a number of prohibitions apply to certain kinds of activity.[2]
It is located on the flooded pits of a worked-out peat deposit. An extensive system of bodies of water covering about 3 thousand hectares has formed in the flooded pits; the shores are gradually becoming overgrown with birch woodland, and floating islands and a system of dikes are forming.[2]
It is home to the largest colony of gulls in continental Europe, numbering about 65 thousand birds, including a species rare for our region, the herring gull. As of the early 2010s, there were about 10 thousand pairs of common gulls, while the number of black-headed gulls over the preceding 20 years had fallen roughly tenfold, from about 20 thousand pairs to 3–4 thousand.[2] Four species of gulls nest on the territory of the reserve: the black-headed gull, the common gull, the herring gull, and the Mediterranean gull, as well as game and rare species of waterfowl and waterside birds; rare protected plants grow there as well.[1]
See also
- Kiselikha
Sources
- bibl.nngasu.ru — By profile, the wildlife refuge is ornithological: it was created to protect the largest colony of gulls and terns in continental Europe, numbering about 21 thousand
- Vremya N — The Sitnikovo peat quarries have been recognized as a key ornithological territory of worldwide importance; it was precisely to protect this territory that the wildlife refuge was established.