Pitsunda-Myussera Nature Reserve

The Pitsunda-Myussera State Nature Reserve lies on the north-western Black Sea coast of Abkhazia, in the municipalities of Gagra and Gudauta: it takes in part of the Pitsunda peninsula and the slopes of the Myussera upland around it, and is the only reserve of Abkhazia in the coastal belt. The reserve covers 3,761 hectares in three sections: the pine grove of the Pitsunda cape (165 hectares), the oak forest of Lidzava (1,296 hectares) and the wooded foothills of Myussera, the largest of the three. Its purpose is to protect the relict pine forest of Pitsunda and the broad-leaved forests of Colchis; it is administered by the Agency of Protected Areas of Georgia, and its territory is occupied.

The glory of the reserve is the Pitsunda pine (Pinus brutia var. pityusa), a relict that survives in a stand of 295 hectares on the Pitsunda cape. With it grow Colchic box, the strawberry tree, tree heath, Iberian oak, Caucasian wingnut, yew, Colchic fig and Caucasian persimmon, species typical of the Mediterranean lands, many of them on the Red List of Georgia; among the herbs are the Caucasian hellebore, Colchic butcher's broom and the royal fern. In all the reserve holds more than 800 plant species, twenty of them in the Red Book. The climate is warm and humid subtropical: the mean annual temperature is 14.9 degrees, January 5 and August 24, with 1,400 millimetres of rain a year.

Protection of the Pitsunda pines began in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the pine groves of Pitsunda were declared a reserve; the valuable forest tracts of Myussera were declared a reserve in 1934. In 1966 the two territories were joined to form the Pitsunda-Myussera State Nature Reserve. Only part of the cape's pines lies within the reserve: of the 25,440 trees counted there, 8,982 grow inside it and the rest in the resort zone.

Since the war of 1992–1993 the territory of the reserve has been occupied, and the Agency of Protected Areas of Georgia cannot manage it. According to the Georgian Encyclopaedia, the reserve's scientists developed a method of restoring this hard-to-propagate pine and transplanting grown saplings, and raised more than 61,000 saplings 20 years old and older on the cape.

The Pitsunda section is the pine grove on the cape at the town of Pitsunda; the Myussera section, the largest of the three, lies to the east on the Gudauta side and is mostly wooded upland. Visiting rules for the reserve should be checked locally.

Abkhazia is an occupied territory. Under Georgian law entry to the region is lawful only through the Enguri crossing; entry from Russia is a breach of Georgian law. Check the current conditions of movement before travelling.