History of the Reserve

Narkompros (People’s Commissariat for Education) was tasked to rectify the boundaries of the Reserve, which the second 1931 expedition under F.F. Schillinger’s guidance was charged with.  Works were carried out starting from early autumn till the first half of winter. The Reserve’s future borders were mapped out and justified. Despite a considerable remoteness of the place from human settlements the population of game animals drastically decreased due to overhunting. “We encounter only single Siberian stag species”, wrote F.F. Schillinger.  As evidenced by N.P. Smirnov, a local old-timer, one could spend 2 to 3 days wandering through the taiga without seeing a single Siberian stag, let alone procuring one. Thus, Special Resolutions passed by the Oirotskiy Province Executive Committee on 10 December 1931 and the Khakasskiy Province Executive Committee on 28 December 1931, adjudged the establishment of the Reserve. The Reserve’s borders were finally approved by the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) on 16 April 1932, which is considered the Reserve’s official date of establishment.  On 10 September 1951 the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR passed the Resolution “On liquidating the Nature Reserve Management Board of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR and  closing down separate nature reserves”, and the Altaiskiy Reserve was on that list. 

Regulation № 2943-р adopted by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR on 24 May 1958, reestablished a number of nature reserves including the Altaiskiy Reserve with the total area of 914,777 ha. In summer 1961 the Altaiskiy Reserve was disbanded again.   

In 1965-1967 Siberian scientific community, predominantly presented by members of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Altai Branch of the USSR Geographical Society and the Altai Region Environmental Committee, brought up the issue of reestablishing the Altaiskiy Reserve within its former territorial boundaries.  

On 24 March 1967 the Executive Committee of the Altai Regional Council of People’s Deputies adjudicated the establishment of the Altaiskiy Reserve: “The Altaiskiy Reserve is established upon a petition of the Altai Region Environmental Committee and Chief Directorate of Game Husbandry and Reserves of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR to preserve the unique natural complex of Lake Teletskoye and Teletskoye Lake taiga”. In 1967 the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR passed a resolution ratifying the establishment of the Altaiskiy State Reserve.