Zaravshon Sanctuary

The Zeravshan sanctuary is a roughly 1,600-hectare protected zakaznik in Tajikistan's Sughd region, lying along the border with Uzbekistan in the Zeravshan valley. It was set aside to protect the Bukhara deer, Cervus elaphus bactrianus, a distinctive ash-grey subspecies with a pale rump patch that is native to the river valleys of Central Asia and had dwindled to only a few hundred animals region-wide by the late twentieth century. Conservation work carried out jointly with Uzbekistan's neighbouring Zarafshan reserve, and supported by international partners including the WWF, has included captive breeding and the release of deer back into protected habitat on both sides of the border since the late 1990s. These combined efforts have helped the overall Bukhara deer population recover substantially from its earlier lows, making the Zeravshan sanctuary part of one of Central Asia's notable cross-border wildlife recovery programmes.