On Friday, June 15 I left Muraviovka for Blagoveschensk, and from Blagoveschensk took a 5-hour afternoon and evening bus ride to the town of I arrived to Arkhara at 9 pm and was met by the director of Khingansky Zapovednik’s science department, Slava. I had been corresponding with him over email for 2 months already and was really, really looking forward to my trip to Khingansky. Slava has been working at Khingansky Zapovednik since the early 1990s. He is a really enthusiastic and talkative guy, ready to show you everything, and to give you a detailed answer to any question about the zapovednik, science and more, with stories to go along. I have to say he taught me a lot about Khingansky, and I am so glad he made it possible for me to come visit and learn about the reserve’s work and its science department.
Slava decided we would go straight to the zapovednik – no need to spend the weekend in Arkhara. So he grabbed his backpack, we bought some groceries, and at about 9:30 we hopped into one of the zapovednik’s vans and headed out to the zapovednik’s ranger station on Lake Klyoshenskoye, about a 45-minute drive away. Khingansky zapovednik is divided into two parts, or clusters (see map left), and 
The road does not go all the way to the ranger station, though. It ends on the opposite side of
Actually, getting up early in the Amur Region at t
his time of year is definitely not a bad thing. The sun is already up. There are fewer bugs, and it is not nearly as hot. This is a very good thing, because even though there are fewer bugs, there are still lots of bugs in the field (mosquitoes, horseflies and ticks), which means you need to wear long pants and long sleeves no matter the temperature. Plus when it is cooler the animals are more active. And although Slava has so much energy that I was almost frightened of the treks through the wilderness that may lie ahead of me, exploring in the morning and the evening means you can relax and sleep in the heat in the afternoon. (Picture: swan from Station for Reintroduction)
So on my second day at Khingansky Slava and I set out at 6 am on a 3-4-hour hike through the Antonovskoye Lesnichestvo. The Antonovskoye Lesnichestvo is all lowlands, about 50% of it is marsh, another 10-15% is birch and 
d half wetlands.)
We headed out through the woods (Slava pointing out or talking about something interesting the whole way) until we reached a spot with a view over a marshy meadow. From here we could look out through binoculars over the meadow to find roe deer, cranes and storks, and from this spot we saw 6 roe deer, 2 Far Eastern storks, and 1 pair of white-naped cranes. Not bad! Later on while walking through the woods and a bit of marsh we saw one roe deer fairly close-up (he bounded away from us), hawks, and all kinds of flowers (lilies and orchids.) There were so many caterpillars in the woods that they were falling on us constantly! I think both of us probably had 2-3 caterpillars attached to our clothes at all times. (Pictures: Slava checking for deer and birds (above); orchid bashmachok -- ladies' slipper (below)
)
In the evening we headed out on another hike, going the opposite direction. This time we were mostly in the marsh, which can make for some difficult walking. Although the marsh does not smell, and is not too wet in June (you can get by with some short rubber boots (galoshes)), there are lots of round bumpy tufts of earth that stick out of a marsh, about a foot high or more, with lots of tall grass growing on top. In between these mounds are little shallow channels of water, say about 4 inches wide. This is pretty uneven ground to walk on! You can either try to walk from tuft top to tuft top – but the tufts are pretty uneven themselves – or walk in bet
ween the tufts – almost impossible. Apparently, you get better with practice, but I felt pretty clumsy and jounced around, and was glad when we reached a wooden-plank trail that the zapovednik laid this year to make it easier to move about when fighting fires. We followed that trail out to a spot where four wolves had killed a roe deer a couple of weeks ago. While Slava searched for the few tufts of fur the wolves had left behind, I marveled at the size and number of fat reddish mosquitoes flying all around me in the heat. Oh, adventures! (Picture: A roe deer scratched his antlers on this little tree - a common picture)
That evening I met another visitor to the ranger station at Klyoshenskoye – a governmental official from Rosprirodnadzor, the agency that oversees the zapovedniks. He had just returned to
On Monday I left the ranger station at 
to meet 3 other science department staff, Lyosha, Marina and Misha, and spend a lot of time exploring the zapovednik’s publications and library, learning more about both Khingansky and the Russian PA system. Lyosha and Marina are married, and they took me in while I was in Arkhara, letting me live with them for a few days. They were just wonderful! I am so lucky to have met so many kind, generous, smart and thoughtful people at Khingansky. They really made it a special place for me. (Picture: me dressed to protect against bugs in the hear, in front of zapovednik buffer zone sign)
Khinga
nsky Zapovednik Activities
Like all zapovedniks, Khingansky has 3 departments: science, education and protection; plus it also has the Station for Reintroduction of Rare Birds.
I spent almost all of my time at Khingansky with the staff in the science department. In addition to coordinating long-term monitoring of zapovednik ecosystems for the annual “Nature Chronicles,” like all zapovedniks, Khingansky also organizes scientific work related to a number of different topics, such as conservation of stork and sandpiper populations (Lyosha and Misha are t
he zapovednik’s 2 ornithologists – Lyosha studies shorebirds, Misha studies storks and cranes); the influence of fires and fire management; the influence of climate change; productivity of small bodies of water, and so on. (Pictures: above: Lake Klyoshenskoye; below: Slava preparing a raft for a scientific expedition to the Bureya River)
Some of the coolest work the science department does are winter counts of ungulate (hooved) species (deer, wild boar, etc). Each December and February they work in teams to ski on huge wide wooden and furry skis over 250 km (!) of routes through both clusters of the zapovednik, counting tracks. And they love it! Slava claims that one year they did these counts on a day that is was 50 below zero. (The Amur Region has a fairly extreme climate.) Khingansky is also unique in its use of GIS technology for science in the zapovednik – for example, they can map fires and also the sites of preventive burns. And they have a satellite system for monitoring fires in the zapovednik, thanks to a grant from US 
Fish and Wildlife Service.
I have to say that I thought all of the scientists that I met at Khingansky were fantastic. They were all very enthusiastic about what they’re doing, and the fact that they do a lot of work together, on expeditions, really makes it seem like they are a united group. In the words of Lyosha, “ As Sergei Ignatenko [the former science director] says – a team.” (Picture: Heron takes off on Lake Klyoshenskoye)
The main threats in the zapovednik are fires (by far number 1 – there can be very serious fires in the Amur Region), and most of the efforts of the nature protection department are focused on fire fighting and preventi
on. In the spring and winter both the rangers in the reserve and the science staff do preventative burns in set areas. Last year Khingansky also held a seminar for local farmers (who often are suspected of setting fires to improve soil fertility, that then rage out of control) about burning, and has plans to work with local residents around the Arkharinsky District who set fires, so that they will do so responsibly. Another threat, particularly to bird populations, is the Bureiskoye Dam and Reservoir, on the 
h and deer, boar, etc on the territory of the reserve. Back in the 1990s the inspectors here used to set spikes behind the cars of poachers who drove into the zapovednik in the winter illegally to hunt deer and boar – once your tires get popped, you might think again about hunting in the reserve. Slava noted that boars today in the reserve versus outside of the reserve demonstrate interesting behavior: boars in the reserve forage for food in the day and sleep at night – obviously, they feel comfortable walking around in broad daylight without fear that they’ll get shot – but boars in neighboring unprotected territories do the opposite – they sleep during the day and forage at night. (Pictures: above: Lake Klyoshenskoye as sun goes down; to left: sign for Khingansky's environmental education camp, "Khingan Country")
The education department at Khingansky has been running annua
l environmental education camps on
The Station for Reintroduction of Rare Birds has been around since 1988 and breeds red-crowned and white-naped cranes for release
into the zapovednik. It is very difficult to breed and release these birds successfully into the wild – they may not fly away south on winter migrations, for example, or they might just keep coming back to the place they hatched, rather than finding their own spot in nature. Most reintroduction stations release chicks into the wild in the fall (the chicks hatch in the spring and migrate south in the fall), but the station at Khingansky waits until the chicks are a year old and release them the next spring, reasoning that several month-old chicks can’t find their way south to migrate their first fall – they don’t have the usual help from their parents, since they were born in captivity. (Picture above: Lena washing basins at pier at St
ation for Reintroduction of Rare Birds)
The station also keeps swans and Far Eastern storks. When I was there, there were 2 month-old storks there who had fallen out of their nest in a strong wind storm in early June (pictured above). (Last picture (to right): Lake Klyoshenskoye)
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