
Barbed wire dismantled at Russian-Mongolian border for the free migration of wild animals
Eight kilometers of unused engineering facilities on the border with Mongolia and China were dismantled in the Republic of Altai on the Ukok plateau. The barbed wire was removed by rangers of the Directorate of Specially Protected Natural Areas of the Republic of Altai with the support of WWF-Russia and VTB Bank. Today the wild animals can migrate freely from one country to another and back: Altai mountain sheep, Siberian mountain goats and snow leopards. Later, inspectors of the Directorate of Protected Areas of the Republic of Altai will install automatic cameras on the Ukok plateau to get video evidence of the free migration of animals.
THE DIRECTORATE OF ALTAI PAs REMOVE THE WIRE ON THE UKOK PLATO. (c) VIDEO D. BEKHTEREV
In 2020, with the support of WWF-Russia, in agreement with the Federal Security Service of the RF in the Republic of Altai, employees of the Directorate of Protected Areas of the Republic of Altai dismantled eight kilometers of barbed wire on the border with Mongolia and China on the territory of the Ukok plateau. WWF Russia provided fuel, transport. A special hydraulic press-machine was purchased so that barbed wire could be pressed into a suitable “cubes” to be loaded onto a truck and taken out from the remote territory of the Ukok plateau. Inspectors manually dismantle the wire, transport it by car to the place where a hydraulic press is installed, with the help of which the metal wire is compressed into compact briquettes.
WWF-Russia and WWF-Mongolia have repeatedly appealed to the Governments of the two countries with a request to dismantle the barriers at the sites for the migration of wild animals, indicated specific areas, cited the results of tracking the migration routes of mountain sheep using radio collars.
In 2012, the General Border Administration of Mongolia partially removed the barbed wire fence in some sections of the border. Today, work on the elimination of lines of engineering and technical structures has begun in Russia. Next year, it is planned to completely dismantle and remove unused fences from the territory of the Ukok Quiet Zone natural park.