This property is located between the Vakhsh and Panj rivers in southwestern Tajikistan. The Reserve includes extensive riparian tugay ecosystems, the sandy Kashka-Kum desert, the Buritau peak, as well as the Hodja-Kaziyon mountains. The property is composed of a series of floodplain terraces covered by alluvial soils, comprising tugay riverine forests with very specific biodiversity in the valley. The tugay forests in the reserve represent the largest and most intact tugay forest of this type in Central Asia, and this is the only place in the world where the Asiatic poplar tugay ecosystem has been preserved in its original state over an area of this size.

Brief synthesis The Tugay Forests of the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve is located in the interfluve of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers in southwestern Tajikistan at the border of Afghanistan. The confluence continues as the Amu Darya, the largest river in Central Asia, running to the Aral Sea. The Reserve includes extensive riparian tugay ecosystems, the sandy Kashka-Kum desert, the Buritau peak, as well as the low (1,000-1,200 m a.s.l.) mountains of the southern spurs of the Aruktau range – the Hodja-Kaziyon mountains. The area of the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve is 49,786 hectares and its buffer zone is 17,672 hectares. The property is composed of a series of floodplain terraces covered by alluvial soils, comprising tugay riverine forests with very specific biodiversity in the valley. Significantly, the property preserves a natural Asiatic poplar tugay vegetation complex. Criterion (ix): The natural complex of Tigrovaya Balka is an outstanding example of continuous ecological and biological processes taking place in the evolution and development of desert-tugay biocenoses and their characteristic plant and animal communities. The reserve hosts various ecological units, not only tugay lowland forests, but also steppe and semi-desert areas and their various ecotones where many stenoeceous species of flora are found. The reserve’s forests, sandy and saline semi-deserts, piedmont semi-savannas, and various wetlands are dynamically adapting to changes in the hydrological regime of the territory. There are several habitats in the reserve: tugay riverine forests, freshwater bodies and marshes, semi-deserts, takirs and solonchaks. The complex features water-resistant and thermophilic, salt-tolerant trees and shrubs such as the Asiatic Poplar or Blue Poplar, the Dzhida or Oleaster, the Multiramose Tamarix. Wildlife includes Bactrian Deer, whose population in the reserve exceeds 300; Goitered Gazelle, Striped Hyena, Gray Monitor, Tajik Black-and-gold Pheasant, and many…