The regional police provided a video capturing white swans along the shoreline of Lake Issyk-Kul.
The police of the Issyk-Kul region continue their systematic work on environmental protection, preservation of the lake's biological resources, and the protection of wild animals, birds, and fish.
Ecologist Alexander Sosnovsky previously stated that in Kyrgyzstan, swans only winter or pass through. “These are birds of forest water bodies. That’s why they thrive so well in ponds, and in some European countries, they live as semi-wild birds, not migrating from unfrozen water bodies. In general, swans, like many others, are not afraid of winter cold.
They fly south not from the frost, but from hunger. One of their wintering places is the unfrozen Issyk-Kul. Some swans nesting in Siberia and Kazakhstan fly further south. Up to 700-1000 individuals gather at Issyk-Kul, while several decades ago, their numbers reached many thousands,” the ecologist reported.
In January 2025, Turmush reported that swans were spotted along the shoreline near the villages of Ak-Olon, Kara-Talaa, and Otkuk in the Ton district.
The leading specialist of the scientific department of the biosphere territory "Issyk-Kul" under the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology, and Technical Supervision, Aibek Zholdoshbekov, then mentioned that the bird count is conducted both in the waters of Lake Issyk-Kul and in the waters of the Orto-Tokoy reservoir.
This counting has been ongoing since 2012, and there is an information database with data. At Lake Issyk-Kul, two species of swans can be found — the whooper swan [kurkuldak ak-kuu] and the mute swan. The whooper swan is listed in the Red Book. In 2024, during the autumn count, specialists encountered a remarkable phenomenon — an Egyptian heron was spotted at Issyk-Kul.
As Zholdoshbekov noted, the bird population changes every year, as evidenced by the ongoing monitoring. During the count in 2023, the figure registered was over 230,000 birds. Among them, 40 species inhabit the water and the coastal zone. Another 20 species inhabit areas close to the water.
