Landscape reserves in the Donetsk steppes — 'Prytorskyi' and 'Halyna Hirka'
The Donetsk steppe inspires poets, artists and film directors, who sing of it in their works.
The 'Halyna Hirka' reserve. Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region.
But one need not be a poet or a painter to see the many colours and the diversity of the feather-grass steppe.
It is not at all necessary to live on this land to feel the power and the pull of the boundless expanses.
Only a pessimist pictures the steppe's smoothness as sad and monotonous. The vast expanse, the immeasurable breadth and distance enchant, and a sense of complete freedom and union with nature at once takes your breath away.
Even in autumn, when the varied grasses of the virgin landscapes have lost their riot of colour under the scorching sun, to feel the open space, to see the rim of the horizon in the afterglow or in the haze, to hear the birdsong and to breathe fresh air with a full chest will do good for a townsman pressed by the peculiarities of the industrial regions.
The steppe zone, despite the closeness of industrial sites, has kept its more natural state. It is a paradox, but on a single hectare of steppe, compared with other natural zones of Ukraine, the greatest number of species of fauna and flora coexist.
Wild asparagus
Lessing's feather grass, or hairy feather grass
Ecologists are sounding the alarm — the areas of the steppe plains are shrinking. The destructive factors for the steppe are the activity of coal enterprises with their vast expanses of waste heaps, the ploughing up of land for agricultural fields, and the unwise planting of shelterbelts.
A view from the 'Halyna Hirka' reserve towards the headframe of the 'Kapitalna' mine
A view from the 'Prytorskyi' reserve towards a spoil heap
A view from the 'Prytorskyi' reserve towards the 'Kapitalna' mine
For the sake of preserving unique natural sites, on the initiative of the All-Ukrainian Ecological League and by order of the head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, in 2018 two landscape reserves of local significance were created in the Pokrovsk district of Donetsk region.
Signposts and information stands have not yet been set up in the nature-reserve territories, unfortunately. Even the local people have not heard of the special status of the surrounding natural monuments.
But they are not hard to find. The 'Prytorskyi' reserve is situated on the territory of the Novoekonomichne settlement council, on the north-eastern side of the locality.
A view of the settlement of Novoekonomichne from the 'Prytorskyi' reserve
If you drive along road T-05-04 from Pokrovsk to Kostiantynivka, then on the left, on the slope of a shallow ravine, you can see sandstone coming to the surface.
Tectonic processes that took place millions of years ago during the formation of the earth's crust created hilly folds with stony outcrops resembling cliffs.
Part of the gully is overgrown with ravine woodland.
The area of the reserve is 166.3 hectares.
The name 'Prytorskyi' comes from the word 'Tor', which denotes an ancient fortress in the area of Sloviansk on the river Tor, as the basin of the Kazennyi Torets river was then called. The status of a landscape reserve provides for the protection of the entire natural complex, which includes the relief, the geological formations, the flora, the fauna and the water resources.
One would wish that the measures aimed at preserving and restoring the whole complex were not a sham. Much depends on the civic stance of the population. On the reserve's territory, economic activity that could disturb the state of the surrounding natural environment is forbidden.
Cars and quad bikes, whose tracks are visible everywhere, cause irreparable harm to the plant cover.
Sandstone, resistant to natural cataclysms, turned out to be a fragile rock before the human wish to immortalise one's name on the faces of the monolith. From the height a panorama of Novoekonomichne and Myrnohrad opens up.
Coordinates: 48°20'21"N 37°20'33"E
The 'Halyna Hirka' reserve lies on the territory of the Myroliubivka village council, on the south-eastern side of Novoekonomichne.
The turn towards the 'Halyna Hirka' reserve near the settlement of Novoekonomichne
The area of the protected zone is 59 hectares.
The central place is taken by a hill, quite large and high, which is not often met with in the steppe zone of the Donetsk Ridge.
The length of the rise amid the plain is about 500 metres, from north-east to south-west.
The origin of the name is most ordinary. According to the villagers' accounts, at the foot of the hill there once lived a woman named Halyna. Had the site been more popular among tourists, some more romantic version would long since have been born, but in this case the residents of Mykolaivka and Novoekonomichne named this hill after the nearby dwelling of Halia, who became the progenitor of the toponym.
The slopes and summit of the hill are strewn with fragments of petrified sedimentary rock. Wind and water not only carried them to the surface but also gave them fanciful shapes.
The traces of humanity's economic activity are creeping ever closer to the hill.
A rubbish dump near the 'Halyna Hirka' reserve.
The planting of some trees on the summit of the rise looks neglected.
At the foot of Halyna Hirka, in a winding ribbon, the shallowed Kazennyi Torets barely makes its way.
Its channel can be traced by the thickets of reeds. This riparian aquatic plant is practically impossible to destroy and to hold back from its swift spread into the vegetable gardens. There once were springs near the hill; now they have filled with silt and vanished.
Into this small water artery of the Donbas, once full-flowing and navigable, enterprises dump production waste, and no one prevents them. There is nowhere even for the cows on the pasture to drink.
Amid the mounting ecological problems, the creation of reserves in the Pokrovsk district is a step forward in preserving the picturesque corners of nature.
Despite the military operations on the territory of Donetsk region, in the Donbas the areas of the nature-reserve fund are increasing by an order of magnitude more than in the other regions of Ukraine.
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