US EditionIn Kyrgyzstan, world's largest natural walnut forest thins away
Harvests have dropped from 15 to 3-4 tonnes daily due to overgrazing, illegal logging, and drought, impacting local livelihoods dependent on the walnut forest.
- Arslanbob's walnut forest, the world's biggest wild walnut grove in Jalal-Abad region, has been slowly thinning due to overgrazing, illegal logging, rising temperatures, and locals still forage walnuts there.
- Human and climatic pressures have damaged Arslanbob's walnut forest as cattle herds trample soil and illegal logging thins wood, while the World Meteorological Organization says Central Asia warmed about 1.5C since 1991.
- Sellers say harvests have fallen from as much as 15 tonnes per day in the 2000s to three to four now, with walnut pickers and traders reporting heat damage lowering nut quality.
- Locals rely on walnuts and officials push value-added products like walnut oil to raise incomes, while Ibragim Turgunbekov enforces fines and local imams encourage preservation in Arslanbob.
- Nursery programmes are seeding millions of trees in the Arslanbob forest nursery, but seedlings recently lacked water for a month, prompting debates among herders, livestock owners, and tourism operators.
35 Articles
35 Articles
In the heart of Central Asia, the largest wild walnut settlement in the world suffers from the combined effects of human activities and climate change, endangering a unique ecosystem and the communities that depend on it. The inhabitants of Arslanbob still remember the time when the forest formed a plant cover so dense that it [...] Read more The millenary walnut forest of Kyrgyzstan faced a double threat first appeared on Le Singulier.
"The forest was so dense before. But it has cleared up," recalls Assel Alieveva. In Central Asia, the oldest wild walnut forest in the world is threatened, trampled by cows and burned by the so...
As the inhabitants of a forest outside Arslanbob, in the Kyrgyz mountains, were scrambling among the fallen golden leaves, they rushed in search of nuts, an ancient pastime and an economic lifebuoy for the region. But the forest, the largest wild walnut forest in the world, has been slowly disappearing for years, hit [...]
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