Uzbekistan intends to increase its contribution to the conservation of biodiversity on the planet.

This was announced at a seminar held in Tashkent on the project of the government of Uzbekistan, UN Development Program and the Global Ecological Fund on the national planning in the field of biodiversity. The project aims at supporting the actions on implementation in the country of the strategic plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity for the period 2011-2020.

Uzbekistan is the participant to the Convention since 1995 Convention and in accordance with it has been carried out the works on the conservation of biodiversity in the country. The country also actively supported the solutions on strengthening the actions in conservation of biodiversity that were put forward at the conference held in 2010. The implementing project is called to fulfill this. In accordance with this it is planned to implement concrete actions separately by region and sectors of the economy.

Fauna and flora of Uzbekistan is richly diverse. Animals are represented by 105 species of mammals, 441 species of birds, 60 species of reptiles, 76 species of fish and three species of amphibians. Among them are rare ones - the snow leopard, the Bukhoro deer, saiga, spiral-horned goat, Severtsev sheep, marmot, Turkestan lynx, and large birds of prey. Flora includes 4500 species of wild-growing higher plants, and over 2 thousand species of mushrooms. Every tenth specie of plants are relict - does not occur anywhere on the planet. Many of the plants have medicinal and nutritional value. The republic grows more than 60 species of fruit crops. Due to the talent and hard work of local selectors they have turned into fruit crops of true taste and aroma and began their journey through the countries of the world. Among them are apricots, walnuts, almonds.

The richness of flora and fauna of Uzbekistan was formed thanks to its special geographical location within the Central Asian region at the junction of several bio-geographic provinces and diversity of natural conditions, mixing here of species of flora and fauna from the Indo-China, the Mediterranean and the steppes of Eurasia.

Conservation and use of this unique natural genetic bank is of paramount importance to science and food security around the world.

“To keep this natural wealth,” said at the seminar the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Water Resources and Ecology of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan Hamraboy Razzakov, “helpful have been about thirty laws and more than 350 regulations adopted during the years of independent development that governing the issues of environmental protection and rational use of natural resources. Implementation of a new project will be of great importance for the conservation of the unique biodiversity of the country.”

(Source: “Uzbekistan Today” Newspaper)