Sunkar: Lords of the Sky

At the Sunkar Raptor Center, a golden eagle named Berkut sits on a handler's gloved arm and regards visitors with the flat, calibrating gaze of a creature that has been at the top of its food chain for thirty million years of evolutionary time. The bird weighs about five kilograms. Its grip on the glove is strong enough to leave bruises through leather. It is not performing; it is simply being what it is, and that is enough.

Sunkar was established in 1989 in the Almatau Valley south of Almaty as a breeding and conservation centre for Kazakhstan's birds of prey. It now houses more than forty species — golden eagles, sakers, peregrines, owls, hawks — in aviaries set against a backdrop of the Trans-Ili Alatau foothills. The centre's core mission is rehabilitation and reintroduction: birds that have been injured, confiscated from illegal trade, or raised specifically for release return to the wild through Sunkar's programs.

For Kazakhstan, the eagle carries a significance that goes well beyond ecology. Berkutchi — the art of training golden eagles for hunting — is a practice that Kazakh nomads developed over centuries and kept alive across empires and Soviet collectivisation both. The eagle is on the national flag. It appears on government seals, banknotes, and the letterheads of state institutions. At Sunkar, the living bird and the national symbol are the same creature, and the gap between emblem and animal closes in a way that official iconography never quite manages.

The centre runs public shows daily and is of the more genuinely educational wildlife experiences available near Almaty.

The relationship between Kazakh nomads and birds of prey runs back further than any written record of the steppe. Berkutchi — the trained eagle hunter — occupied a specific and respected role within nomadic society, spending years developing a partnership with a single golden eagle that could locate and hold prey across terrain impassable on foot. The eagle was not a tool; it was a working partner, fed from the hunter's hand, carried on the arm for hours across the steppe, and sometimes mourned when it died. The practice passed from parent to child across generations and survived the Kazakh Khanate, the Dzungar wars, Russian annexation, and Soviet collectivisation.

The Soviet period is the relevant context for Sunkar's founding. Agricultural expansion and pesticide use across Central Asia decimated raptor populations throughout the mid-twentieth century. Saker falcons, already valuable in the illegal wildlife trade supplying Middle Eastern falconry markets, fell toward critically low numbers. By 1989, when Sunkar was established in the Almatau Valley south of Almaty, the saker's survival in Kazakhstan required active intervention.

The centre's founders were ornithologists working against a straightforward ecological emergency. What they built over the following decades — a breeding programme, a rehabilitation pipeline, and an education operation — became the institutional home of a tradition that the Soviet system had tried to suppress as "backward" while simultaneously destroying the conditions that made it possible.

Kazakhstan formally submitted berkutchi to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2010. The living practice continues, and Sunkar is its most visible institutional home.

The daily raptor show is the centrepiece, and it earns the reputation. For roughly an hour, handlers release birds in sequence — barn owls on silent wings, saker falcons at full sprint, and finally the golden eagles, which arrive with enough momentum to make visitors step back involuntarily. The handlers narrate throughout, explaining hunting behaviour, the physiology of raptor vision, and the specific training relationship between a berkutchi and his eagle. It is of the better wildlife presentations in Central Asia because the people running it are primarily conservationists rather than entertainers.

After the show, the aviaries are open for closer viewing. The permanent residents — birds with injuries preventing release — can be observed at close range, and the handlers are generally willing to answer questions. A golden eagle seen at arm's length through an aviary fence is a different encounter than the same bird as a speck in the sky over the mountains.

Some visitors arrange a session holding a trained bird on a gloved arm. This needs to be booked in advance and carries a separate fee, but the experience of supporting three to four kilograms of live eagle — the grip of its talons through heavy leather, the heat of the bird's body, the way it adjusts its weight with tiny shifts of its wings — is something that does not translate fully into photographs.

The surrounding Almatau Valley is worth a walk before or after the centre. The canyon narrows upstream and the path along the river stays cool even in summer.

Arrive a few minutes before the show starts. The birds perform in an open area without assigned seating, and the best positions — slightly elevated if possible, giving a clear sightline across the open flight zone — fill up quickly with families who have been here before. Standing at the edges works, but the centre offers better angles as the birds sweep low over the crowd.

Flash photography disturbs the birds and is not permitted during the performance. Most handlers will tell you this at the start, but it bears knowing in advance: a startled eagle during a dive does not end well for anyone involved. A fast lens and good natural light produce better images anyway; the shows run in daylight and the Almatau Valley gets strong, clear sun from midmorning.

The centre runs shows twice daily on most days, typically in the morning and early afternoon. Check the schedule before you visit because timings shift between summer and winter months and occasionally shows are cancelled due to weather conditions or the birds' training schedules.

Children under five can find the noise and speed of the birds overwhelming. A golden eagle flying at full speed over the heads of a crowd is louder and faster than most small children expect, and while some love it immediately, others need a few minutes to settle. Standing slightly behind the main group for the first flight gives a child an exit option if needed.

The centre sells a small selection of books on Kazakh falconry and raptor biology at the gate — worth taking a look at if the history of berkutchi has caught your interest.