Animal and plant life abounds where Russia's wide-open steppe (or grassland) meets the southern edge of the temperate forest belt. Although much of the steppe in Western Russia has been plowed and forests cleared for agriculture, island-like remnants of forest-steppe habitat have been preserved in the Tsentralno-Chernozemny Zapovednik, located in the Kursk Region. The nature reserve protects the last in the world intact black earth soils, also known as chernozem - the broad strip of fertile land that stretches across southern Russia. Created in 1935 to preserve the last unplowed areas of original steppe habitat, today the Tsentralno-Chernozemny Zapovednik protects a mixture of steppe, forest, and swamp communities on six different territories.