the Chusovaya are from source to mouth: Revda (left) Bolshoy Shishim (right) Utka (left) Sulyom (right) Mezhevaya Utka (right) Serebryanka (right) Sylvitsa (right) Kumysh (left) Koyva (right) Usva (right) Lysva (left) Sylva (left) Flora and fauna The upper reaches of the Chusovaya have abundant marshes and meadows. Forests are rare and are mostly pine forests. The middle reaches are covered by boreal coniferous forests, which are dominated by pine, Siberian Pine, larch and fir. Forests are scarce also in the lower reaches and mostly contain aspen, birch, mountain ash and willow. Fishes include minnow, bass, ruffe, roach, pike, ide (Leuciscus idus), chub (Squalius cephalus) and bream. There are colonies of crayfish. The tributaries show traces of beavers and the main river hosts muskrats. In the autumn, the river is visited by ducks, geese and other waterfowl. The surrounding forests are inhabited by usual taiga animals such as moose, brown bear, wolf, lynx, fox, hare, squirrel, hazel grouse and black grouse. History The river had long been inhabited by people, as evident from numerous Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements found on the river banks. The 15th Century chronicler Giacomo Filippo Foresti (a.k.a. Jacobus Philippus Foresti da Bergamo) mentioned a river in the area named the Thisageta, and the 19th Century archaeologist Sir Ellis Minns proposed that the Chusovaya may originally have been named after the Thyssagetae, a little-known steppe tribe who apparently lived in the area. In the Middle Ages, the river basin was mostly populated by Bashkirs, Mansi and Komi-Permyaks. It is assumed that the Battle of Chulmandore, in which Komi-Permyaks defeated Mongols, occurred near the river mouth. The Chusovaya River was first mentioned in 1396 in the Novgorod chronicles. Russians started active explorations of the Urals in the early 16th century, and the first Russian settlement Nizhnechusovskie Gorodki appeared on Chusovaya in 1568. From 1579, the garrison of this settlement was headed by the Russian explorer Ermak. The entire river basin was then owned by merchants Stroganov. Stroganovs in particular supplied the expedition of Ermak in the autumn of 1581 up the Chusovaya and beyond the Urals. Subsequently, the vast lands beyond the Urals, including the upper Chusovaya, were given to Demidov, and the border between the possessions of Stroganov and Demidov was at the river Mezhevaya Utka. Demidov was actively exploring the rich local deposits in his lands and built several iron works, including Polevskoy (1722), Vasilyevo-Shaitansky (1732),