Authorities to create natural reserve for Caspian seals in Kazakhstan

The government of Kazakhstan wants to preserve the Caspian seal by establishing a special natural reserve in the Mangystau and Atyrau regions.

The Ministry of Agriculture has already presented a draft regulation on «the creation of the state natural reserve to preserve the Caspian seal. It will be available for public consideration on http://legalacts.egov.kz until June 5.

“To create the state natural reserve under the Fishing Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture to preserve the population of the Caspian seal in the Caspian Sea, at the territory of the Mangystau and Atyrau regions,» the document says.

The natural reserve will occupy an area of 109,558 hectares, 69,839 hectares of which are expected to be a protected area. As the ministry recalled, the Caspian seal has been on the list of endangered species since November 9, 2020.

«One of the biological peculiarities of this species is the seasonal volatility of their habitat. It is important to keep in mind that Caspian seals desperately need ice sheets during their breeding season and that ice canopy appears only in the Kazakhstani and Russian sectors of the Caspian Sea. This is why the Kazakhstani part of the sea plays a vital role in the preservation of this species,» the developers of the draft regulation said.

As Kursiv reported earlier this year, 40 dead seals were found on the Caspian Sea coast in the Mangystau region. At the time, inspectors of the Agriculture Ministry didn’t find any injuries in those dead seals. However, this wasn’t an isolated case and inspectors reported several such incidents since then. Overall, more than 180 animals have died since March 2024.

Fishing inspectors found 59 dead seals in 2023 and 172 in 2022 (over the period from October to December). The analysis of dead animals showed that they died from acute pneumonia due to viral infections and lowered immunity of the animals because their habitat had been polluted.

As of last year, there were 300,000 seals in the Caspian Sea. As the Caspian seal population gets smaller and smaller, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has taken this issue under his control.