mykolaiv ukraine
Black Sea biosphere reserve. The Kinburn dunes
mykolaiv ukraine
Herodotus, the father of history, visited this area in the fifth century B.C., has left a record
that became the basis of the legend about Hileas. “If one crosses the Borysthenes,” he
wrote in his parchment scrolls, the first country one comes to from the sea is that of Hileas
nhabited by Scythian farmers, whom the Hellenes living by the banks of the River Hypanis
call the Borysthenians, and they themselves the Olbiopolitans.” Hileas in Ancient Greek
meant a land covered with rich woods.
The first researchers of the Kinburn Peninsula have not found here anything that would
recall the earthly paradise described by Herodotus. Their discoveries give a sad monoto-
nous picture: sand, saline soil, and an absence of people. It was a land of sandy hills (here
called kuchuhury), reeds in the shallows and salt marshes, disease-infested swamps, ruth-
less heat, and grass.
And suddenly, miraculously, tree limbs close over one’s head, casting everything in the
aura of twilight on even the sunniest daylight. Ancient and prehistoric uprooted willows
stoop over the lake. A continuous wall of pliable water willows, buckthorns, brambles,
blackberry bushes form an impassable thicket. No one knows who has left their footprints
in the meter and a half of grass on the footpath to the forest’s patriarch, the mighty oak,
serenaded by an endless symphony of birdsongs.
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This is no legend and no imagination. It is the Volyzhyn Forest that stretches over the
Kinburn Peninsula, a small part of the Black Sea State Preserve, visible proof that the leg-
ends about Hileas had a basis in life.
The Black Sea Preserve, created in 1927, united the remnants of the Kinburn Peninsula
forests, southern parts of the Dnipro and Buh estuaries, virgin steppe areas of the north-
west Black Sea littoral, and numerous sandy islands with the water reserve zone in the of
Yahorlytska and Tendrivska Bays. Under protection was taken the avian empire of millions
of winged residents and rare mammalian species.
Today the Black Sea Biosphere Preserve is unique in Ukraine. This complex of natural oak
stands and marshy abundance has international significance. Amid dry steppe, the sandy
hills of which are covered in dense brush, prairie grass, and moss, open the tourist’s eye to
its groves, abandoned bird nests, and glens. The picture is augmented by lakes, the banks
of which have become inundated with cane, and silence broken by the calls of ducks. On
the horizon azure tidal pools are adorned by waterfowl, laced with red flora. On the flick-
ering surface of the water, dark clouds seems to float over the preserve islands.
This only a first impression, which far from conveys the true medley of the landscape,
flora, and fauna of the preserve. Occupying approximately 3000 hectares of dry land in
Mykolaiv oblast (plus about 6000 hectares in Kherson oblast) and over 350 sguare kilo-
meters of water open spaces in the Yahorlytska and Tendrivsky bays, it is unique in terms
of the beauty and richness of its flora and fauna. Speaking in the language of impartial
statistics, the Black Sea reserve boasts approximately 600 varieties of wild plant, including
24 medicinal ones, along with 280 avian and fifty mammalian species.
Located on one of main routes of seasonal bird migration, the reserve provides shelter and
food almost three hundred species of our feathery friends, among them those that are
quite unique and rare like the blackheaded seagull, which is to be found in a quantity
unseen anywhere else in the world, or that relic of the winged world, the white-tailed
eagle. Here one can encounter pheasant and deer, hare and fox, wild goal and boar, gray
and white heron, pelicans and swans, while one listens to the nightingale and oriole.
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Black Sea biosphere reserve. The Kinburn.
In the early 1960s people began the reclamation of the Hilea on the Kinburn Peninsula.
Here green rows of young spurge laurel seedlings have grown to form a microclimate rare
on the entire northern Black Sea littoral. Sea air impregnated with the scents of pine nee-
dles and steppe grasses constitute the basis of its curative properties. From desert
scorched by thousands of years of the sun, the coast of the peninsula is beginning to
transform into one of perfect health and beauty.
The Black Sea Biosphere Preserve encompasses only a small portion of the Kinburn
Peninsula. For many years this sparsely populated and remote nook of Mykolaiv oblast has
remained virtually untouched by today’s civilization. Today it hosts three modest villages –
Pokrivka, Vasylivka, and Pokrovske – with a permanent population of about 800.
Perhaps it was thanks to the legacy of nature Itself that Kinburn has always attracted
those drawn to creative callings. It has been favored by artists; here writers collect inspi-
ration; and city folk, weary of the hustle and bustle, regain their strength and health. The
local people maintain their traditional llfestyle and unique color, living in union with
nature.
This small strip of land, which in clear weather it is quite visible with its high Ochakiv coast,
extends from east to west parallel to the mainland, separating the Dnipro-Buh estuary
from the Black Sea. The peninsula is long (about 40 kilometers) and narrow, no more than
ten kilometers at its widest point, and at its narrowest one can stand with one foot in the
estuary and the other in the sea.
The Kinburn Peninsula is perhaps the part of Mykolaiv oblast most enshrined in poetry.
Many poets and prose writers have devoted works to this blessed land, works about its
vivid history, picturesque nature, and the unique character of its inhabitants.
The heroic history of the area was enshrined in the novel, Kinburn, by Ukrainian writer
Oleksandr Hlushko, who was born in Pokrovka, and its contemporary life in Ivan
Hryhurko’s novel, Black Fish. Artists and writers from, Kyiv, Moscow, Odesa, and else-
where have all dedicated works to Kinburn.
The Kinburn Peninsula presents a unique nature complex of the lower Dnipro sands, this
mosaic of alluvial steppe, natural groves and thickets, wetlands, and pines planted by
man. A large number of plant species are unique to this small ecosystem, while others are
rare or endangered and protected (e.g., the Dnipro birch, Dnipro savory, Crimean white
pool, and other species found only here). About sixty kinds of animals Inhabiting this area
are entered in the Red Book of Ukraine (e.g., the sacred scarab, steppe snake, black
winged stilt, and sandpiper).
mykolaiv ukraine
The locality is a natural migratory route of many kinds of
birds, a place of their concentration, nesting, and wintering. Taking all this into account
and in order to preserve the biological and landscape variety, local resort areas, and to sup-
ply the needs of the populace, the Mykolaiv oblast council resolved in 1992 to establish the
Kinburn Peninsula Landscape Park of 17,890.2 hectares, including 5,631.3 hectares of
wetlands.
