Kazakhstan’s nature reserves are the ideal destination for botanical,
Bird-watching and insect-watching tours. Nature-lovers- whether amateur geologists, zoologists or, particularly, botanists- will find much to interest them around Almaty. Here, over 70-80 km, you can see the landscape gradually change from desert to fertile steppe to mountains. You can walk deep into the forests of fir and larch, and then suddenly find yourself in sub alpine or alpine meadows and glades or the rocky “desert” of mountains. And all this is right on your doorstep, easily accessible.
Many butterflies and moths make their home in Kazakhstan; there are around 400 species of butterfly, over half of which inhabit the Tien-Shan Mountains. The Almaty region has some 50 butterflies and nowhere else in the world. Some of them are extremely rare, 15 are protected species.
  The birds of Kazakhstan are many and colorful, numbering almost 500 species, 80% of which nest here. Migrating birds fly over the major lakes of Central Kazakhstan, and over 4 million stop off here. Lake Tengiz is internationally known as the home of the extremely rare pink flamingo. Another rare bird is the white-crested duck: in the late 1980s there were only 20,000 left in the world.
 The gerflacon native to this region lives in Central and Northern Kazakhstan- and nowhere else on the planet. The paradise fly-catcher is a unique bird found in the Western Tien-Shan. Each spring it migrates from the forests of South India to the Aksu-Jabagly nature reserve (in Southern Kazakhstan) to raise its young. In 1968 the testing-site of a relict seagull, last seen in 1929 and thought extinct, was discovered in the Alakol basin. The relict seagull – a species that has existed for over 20 million years – is the pride of Alakol. The black stork, white-tailed sea eagle and osprey make their homes amid the mountain lakes of the Altai in Eastern Kazakhstan. There are 42 species of birds of prey, including 30 kinds of hawk, in Kazakhstan.