Staraya Pustin Lakes

The lakes are situated in the north of the Arzamas region on the river Serezha near the village of Staraya Pustin. In 1934 on purpose of keeping the unique Landscape of flowing limestone lakes of Pustin system and the forests around them safe and sound and also on purpose of keeping and increasing the amount of rare and valuable types of animals the Pustin hunting reserve was organized.

The main peculiarity of the Pustin natural reserve is its 8 deep(14m)limestone lakes:Velikoye, Svyatoe, Glubokoye, Kruglenkoye, Parovoye, Dolgoye, Narbus and Karasevo united into one and the same system. Half of them are flowing- the river Serezha flows through them. On its long way the Serezha imperceptibly turns from a narrow blue ribbon into the lakes and forms a water labyrinth.

The Pustin lakes are rich in flora, in almost all typical water plants of Russia, 55 of them are very rare. The reserve is rich in various types of forests: fur and leaf-bearing forests, pine woods and oak forests. One can come across very old trees, 200 years of age, 35m high and 1m thick. A lot of plants are numbered among the pages of the Red Book.

 The particuliarity of the Pustin lakes is that one can find here the representatives of all kinds of water-plants. The animal world of the reserve is as rich as the vegetable world. Yhe reason for this is the variety of the habitat 3-6 kinds of mammals live in the lakes, among them some rare ones: water beavers, otters and musk-rats which are getting extinct. Russian musk-rats are the typical representatives of preglacial period, the contemporaries of mamonths and furred rhinoceroses found only in the European part of Russia. The reserve is a wonderful inhabiting place for seven types of bats. Many types of water-towls and riverside birds make their nests and feed here.

Among very rare birds one can see golden eagles or bald eagles. Sometimes if you are lucky you can see swans.

A lot of rare "Red Book" representatives of fauna inhabit the Pustin reserve, among them picturesque butterflies.

All Pustin lakes teem  with bream crucians, ides, roaches, tenches, pikes, ruffs, perches, red-finned fish and many others.