News

The II International Congress of Young Scientists of Kazakhstan was held in Almaty on 11–12 December 2025. The plenary session was hosted at the “Gylym Ordasy” complex, while section meetings and master classes took place at five leading universities of the city. The forum brought together more than 1,000 young researchers, over 80 foreign scientists from 24 countries, representatives of the scientific community, academicians, deputies and heads of scientific organizations. The Congress was dedicated to the UNESCO theme “Trust, Transformation and Tomorrow: the science we need by 2050”. The Institute of Zoology was represented by Gulzhanat Tanabekova, PhD, Academic Secretary of the Institute.

In 2026, the first state nature reserve of Kazakhstan and Central Asia – Aksu-Zhabagly – will celebrate its 100th anniversary. To mark this milestone, a team of authors prepared a book dedicated to the oldest reserve of our country. The compiler and editor of the book “Aksu-Zhabagly 100 Years” is A.F. Kovshar, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, and Chief Researcher of the Institute of Zoology of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Fifty young researchers from around the world gathered at Lund University (Sweden) to take part in the course “Ecology of Animal Migration”, designed for the advanced training of PhD students and doctoral candidates.

The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan has announced a key decision of the 20th Conference of the Parties to the CITES Convention, held in Samarkand from 24 November to 5 December 2025: the zero export quota on saiga horns originating exclusively from the Kazakhstani population has been lifted. The decision was made following extensive consultations and discussions both at the Conference and in preparation for its work.

“STRATEGY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG SCIENCE: FROM PROBLEMS TO SOLUTIONS” was the theme of the Republican round table of the Council of Young Scientists under the MNHE of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which took place on 28 November at the Kazakhstan-British Technical University.

The 9th Asian Arachnological Conference took place in Vang Vieng, Laos, from November 10 to 14. Kazakhstan was represented by Leonid Kim — Junior Researcher at the Laboratory of Arachnology and Other Invertebrates and Chair of the Council of Young Scientists of the Institute of Zoology.

The International Conference “Problems and Prospects for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Central Asia” was held on November 6–8, 2025, at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. The event brought together more than 100 scientists and young researchers from 15 countries.

From October 4 to 12, the team of the Institute of Zoology of Kazakhstan conducted a short but successful expedition to the Kurty locality in Almaty Region — one of the few continental Paleozoic sites in Kazakhstan. The exposed rocks here date back to the Permian period, about 280 million years old, meaning that the organisms found in Kurty lived long before the age of dinosaurs.

We invite schools across Kazakhstan to join the movement to protect the Central Asian tortoise!

“Jurassic Lake Karatau” is the world’s largest Jurassic insect locality, located on the northeastern slope of the Karatau range, at the border of Zhambyl and Turkestan regions. It is one of the few places on Earth where exceptionally thin-bedded rocks, known as “paper” or “fish” shales, preserve remains of animals and plants that lived about 160 million years ago. More than 800 species of Mesozoic insects are known from here, along with unique finds of pterosaurs, amphibians, and fishes that inhabited Kazakhstan during the age of dinosaurs.