A new specially protected natural area may appear in the Orenburg region

The press service of the Russian Geographical Society reported that scientists from the Steppe Institute of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Steppe Expedition of the Russian Geographical Society proposed creating a new protected area in the Orenburg region to preserve the unique natural monument "Bozhedarovskoe pine woodland".

The project for the new protected area took its name in honor of the disappeared village. Here, the pine trees that remained from the famous Buzuluksky forest were miraculously preserved. Pine woodlands are located in the upper reaches and interfluves of two right tributaries of the Borovka River - the Sennaya and Usakly rivers. Both of them have long been disintegrating into small reaches and puddles in summer and winter, and the banks are heavily plowed. The environmental disaster has become especially noticeable in recent years.

Preservation of Bozhedarovsky pines is the most important task. Natural pine forests are a gene pool that has survived droughts, fires and barbaric environmental management. In addition, they remain carriers of unique scientific information about the climate of the past, which will help reconstruct natural changes over the past 200–300 years.

Participants of the Steppe Expedition propose to begin designing a new protected area, taking into account two former specially protected areas: the Polyakovsky Forest and the Usaklinsky Pines. In 1998 they were given the status of state natural monuments. However, in 2015, the Polyakovsky forest lost its status. As a result, the most valuable fragments of relict forests and about 150 old pines in hayfields were left without protection.

It is proposed to include two compact areas of relict pine trees in the new protected area: Bozhedarovsky borok and Usaklinsky borok, as well as five forest edges with hayfields on which grow about 200 relict trees aged 150–200 or more years.