Nature · Qo‘ng‘irot District
Ustyurt Plateau
The stone desert between the Caspian and the Aral
Nature · Moynaq District
Lake Sudochye
Once the largest lake in the Amu Darya delta, now a system of several water bodies. A breeding ground for greater flamingos, pelicans and other birds, and a Ramsar wetland since 2023.
Photo: Dilmurad91 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The lake’s story
Sudochye lies in the Aybugir depression on the left side of the Amu Darya delta, with the eastern escarpment of the Ustyurt Plateau running along its western shore. It was once the delta’s largest lake, covering up to 350 km² at an average depth of about 2 metres, linked by a channel to the Aral Sea and serving as a spawning ground that yielded up to 2,000 tonnes of fish a year.
As river inflow fell in the 1960s the lake dried and in 1968 broke up into separate pools. Drainage water from the Kungrad and Main collectors later partly revived it, and today there are several lakes — Akushpa, Greater Sudochye, Karateren and Begdulla-Aydin.
A haven for birds
Sudochye is one of the most important bird areas around the Aral. A colony of about 7,000 nesting greater flamingos — listed in Uzbekistan’s Red Book and roughly 1.4% of the world population — has been recorded here, along with Dalmatian and great white pelicans, pygmy cormorants, spoonbills and mute swans. A 50,000-hectare ornithological reserve was created in 1991, the lake became an Important Bird Area in 2008 and a Ramsar site in 2023, and it now lies within the Sudochye-Akpetki reserve of more than 442,000 hectares.
A visitor facility for watching birds, especially flamingos, opened on the shore in 2022, near the ruins of the abandoned fishing village of Urga.
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