Great River of the Far East
Amur is a great Far Eastern river. Its basin covers a vast territory — over 1.8 million km2 of Russian, Chinese and Mongolian land. About 3000 km of state border between Russia and China passes Along the Amur. Here live about 30 different peoples and ethnic groups.
Wetlands stretching along the entire Amur and its tributaries are the most valuable natural complexes. This is the place of reproduction of fish stocks and the most important site on migration routes for millions of birds. Here nests 95% of the population of Oriental storks, 65% of Japanese population and 50% of
Animal and plant world of the Amur basin is diverse. There are more than 5000 species of vascular plants, about 400 species of birds, more than 70 species of mammals, including the Amur tiger. In the basin of the great river, there are more than 130 species of freshwater fish. It is here that an endemic to Amur Kaluga, the largest sturgeon of the world whose weight can exceed a ton, is still found. The Russian Far East is rich in water features: there are many rivers, lakes and marshes on our territory. Amur River is one of the largest river basins in the world. Amur and its sources and tributaries largely determine the natural features of a vast region, which is located in three states simultaneously: Russia, China and Mongolia.
Initially, Amur was not listed in the priorities of the Fund. The situation changed in 2001, when the WWF division in the Far East became the Amur branch. It became obvious that the increasing anthropogenic load threatens to irreversibly change the state of the «framework and connecting links» of the entire ecoregion — the river network of the Amur River. In 2002, WWF together with seven environmental organizations of the region developed an «Action Plan for the Conservation of Biological Diversity of the Amur Freshwater Ecoregion».