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Oleshky Sands is a barren, infertile place, but visitors are now putting this vast landscape on the map.
A few hundred years ago, this area was a plain with grass, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, sheep farming caused the grass to die. The root system that bound the sandy soil was lost, and the soil turned to sand and began to engulf the region.
The barren landscape has in recent years become a popular tourist attraction.
“Our desert is one of the biggest sandy areas in Europe. We have more than only barchans and landscapes as other deserts do. We have plants, trees, shrubs. There are many animals: wolves, hares. There are even fish in the lakes. That distinguishes us from other deserts; we have not just sand,” said Yana Demydova, an inspector at the National Park Oleshky Sands.
Barchans are crescent-shaped shifting sand dunes. Oleshky Sands has some which are up to 20 meters high in some places, but the desert is also home to oases and sandstorms.
In the summer, air temperatures can reach up to 45 degrees Celsius, and the temperature of the sand’s surface can reach 75 degrees Celsius.
As more Ukrainians become internal tourists, they are starting to visit the desert, which became a national park in 2010.
The sand started spreading many years ago, threatening the main regional industry of fruit and vegetable cultivation. In order to stop the spread, pine forests were planted in the 20th century. More tree planting is planned for early 2019, when 30 hectares of pine trees will be planted to stem the sandy tide.
“This was an edge of the desert in the time. The huge sand hills were moving. They had been moving, coming closer and closer to people’s settlements as there were no houses at that time. The sand buried them. So people came to this region and planted these trees. It took some time for them to take root. Now, there are some places where the pines are holding the sandy soil together, their roots like real people,” said ecologist Volodymyr Sheludko.
The sandy area is 161 thousand hectares, or about sixteen hundred square kilometers. The whole area, including the forested sandy areas, is 2,100 square kilometers.
Oleshky Sands is just one more reason to come visit Ukraine, a country full of unexpected beauty.
