Ashgabat, 19 May 2010 – The United Nations Development Programme and the Hazar Nature Reserve have increased efforts to build up the Reserve’s capacity to develop adaptive approaches to conservation of biodiversity in the Hazar Nature Reserve located on the Caspian Sea coast. The Reserve is now promoting the adaptive management strategies to effectively react to the rapid change of the shoreline in shallow waters, the emergence of new islands and the process of disappearance of the existing landscape that might affect the places of wintering and nestling of birds in the Caspian Sea as well as zoning of biodiversity in the Hazar Nature Reserve.

The introduction of the adaptive management strategies is one of the priorities of the UNDP/GEF joint project “Conservation and Sustainable Use of Globally Significant Biological Diversity in the Hazar Nature Reserve on the Caspian Sea Coast ” implemented jointly with the Ministry of Nature Protection of Turkmenistan. Learning from previous lessons, the Hazar Nature Reserve has developed a program to monitor changes in the sea level and started its implementation with the support of the UNDP project. To this end, a group of national environmental experts and ornithologists of the Hazar Nature Reserve successfully carried out monitoring expeditions in 2009 and early May 2010 to record the process of changing of the shoreline as well as emergence and disappearance of islands within the Hazar Nature Reserve.

Data obtained from observations will allow the Hazar Nature Reserve to foresee climate changes and subsequent biodiversity protection priorities in most parts of the reserve, establish a proper conservation regime, and, if the legislative framework permits, to map out ecological guided tours to promote preservation of biodiversity in the reserve as part of Turkmenistan’s National System of Protected Areas. Timely reflection on fluctuation in the sea level will also help local and national authorities to better plan housing construction in the coastal zone of the Caspian region.

The Caspian Sea biological diversity accounts for 1814 species of flora and fauna, and the majority of species are endemics. Out of 314 species of birds, 32 are listed in the Red Book of Turkmenistan and 32 in the Red Book of International Union for Conservation of Nature. Most of the reserve areas are wetlands of global significance listed in the Ramsar Convention. The area includes wintering areas for the Caspian sturgeon and habitats for the Caspian seal. In addition two of the world’s major flyways - the Central Asian-Indian Flyway and the East African Flyway - converge here, making the coastal wetlands of the Hazar Nature Reserve especially important for migratory birds. The recurrent process of regression of the Caspian Sea level may lead to disappearance of intertidal islands as the main place of nesting of birds, especially sandwich tern, whose numbers in the Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea declined 3-5 times in recent years.

In the course of the project lifecycle, UNDP has facilitated regular survey of birds wintering in the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea stretching from the border with Kazakhstan in the north to the border with Iran in the south in order to determine the number and composition of birds. Based on the results of birds survey, the researchers of the Hazar Nature Reserve can measure ecological wellbeing of protected areas and develop evidence-based recommendations for the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources in accordance with international commitments of Turkmenistan for the protection of the world’s important biodiversity and wetlands in Turkmenistan.

The UNDP/GEF joint project “Conservation and Sustainable Use of Globally Significant Biological Diversity in the Hazar Nature Reserve on the Caspian Sea Coast” started in 2006. It is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Nature Protection of Turkmenistan. The main goal of the project is to preserve globally significant biological diversity of Turkmenistan through strengthening sustainability of the country’s national protected areas system based on piloting the management model for the Hazar Nature Reserve.