Students of the Department «Tourism and Service» are volunteers of the project to restore the burnt tugai of the Ili River Delta

On October 14, 2023, students of the University «Turan» of the Department «Tourism and Service» (heads – Islamgulova A.F., Aimagambet M.S.) as volunteers took part in a project to restore the burnt tugai of the Ili River delta. This project was organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has been implementing environmental projects in Kazakhstan since 1998.

Tugai are desert floodplain tree–shrub communities growing in a narrow ribbon in valleys and deltas of rivers. Tugai forests are in serious condition everywhere, as they experience anthropogenic (fires, grazing, unregulated recreation) and climatic (increased aridization) impacts. Frequent fires in the Balkhash region threaten the areas of growth of tugai forests, which carry not only water protection and soil protection functions, but also are the habitat of many wild animals. To restore and preserve the tugai forests of the delta of the Or, 1,500 Sucker seedlings and more than 100 Turangi were planted by volunteer students.