Poplar forest is a quite seldom kind of vegetation in Kamchatka, which can compete with the abundant Erman's birch only at the very rich soils near the river banks. Like the other scarce trees in Kamchatka, larch and fur, the poplar forest are preferably cut down for timber. The predominance of the birch forest bases upon the special weather conditions in Southern Kamchatka: high humidity of the air and a lot of rain- and snowfall. Additionally the Erman's birch is a vigorous and ubiquitous tree, that learnt to grow both in the valley and in the mountains. The birch makes the Kamchatka forests very different from the typical Siberian coniferous taiga. It's surprising, that there are no big mammals grazing the dense vegetation on the forest ground in the mountains of Southern Kamchatka. The giant moos settles in the lowlands in the west and north of the peninsula. The bighorn sheep are restricted only to the stony parties of the mountains and they avoid the forests. Even the bears graze much often in the open areas than in the forest. The absence of the big herbivores effects, that the wolf can't survive in the Southern Kamchatka. In the north of the peninsula the wolf packs follow the herds of the reindeers. Kamchatka was long time an island and it is not since very long a part of the Asian continent. The long time of isolation caused absence of many widely spread groups of animals, e.g. reptiles, amphibians, storks, herons and the big herbivores in the Southern Kamchatka.