The natural reserve fund of Ukraine is not large. Especially if we compare its area of 2.8 million hectares with similar lands in the USA or Canada. Even its share in the total land fund of the country — 4.6%, is inferior to the corresponding indicators of a number of prosperous European countries. But, however it is, today on the territory of Ukraine there are 5136 natural monuments and nature reserves, 4 biosphere and 17 nature reserves, 12 national parks, 20 arboretums, 17 botanical gardens and 7 zoos. We remind that reasonable and economically developed countries are constantly increasing the area of their protected areas. Poor and depressed countries are actively destroying their own unique landscapes — the last islands of virgin nature with plant and animal communities living on them.
Over the years of independence, less than a dozen protected areas have been created in Ukraine. The list of the lucky ones includes a section of the Zaporizhzhya steppe together with the adjacent water area of the Azov Sea. This object was founded in 2010 by Viktor Yushchenko and was named «Priazovsky National Park». Ecologists and naturalists managed to «grab» 78.1 thousand hectares of territory, which has not yet been touched by human industrial activity, from the land fund of Zaporizhzhya region.
As a result, under the status of «Priazovsky National Natural Park» the Molochny Liman Lake and the water area of Utlyuksky Liman (except for its northern part) with the unique Bolgrad Sivashik and the mouth of the Atmanai River were saved from careless economic activity of Homo sapiens. Besides, 4 fragments of the Azov Sea coastline located near Berdyansk were included into the protected lands. The first is a two-kilometer zone of the coast from Fedotova Spit to the place where the Korsak River flows into the sea. The second fragment is the area of the Petrovskaya beam. The third fragment is the south-western part of the Berdyansk Spit. The fourth sector is several unnamed limanic lakes with the mouths of the Berda and Zelenaya rivers. The city of Berdyansk itself and the «headland» of the Berdyansk Spit are not included in the nature protection zone.
The National Park «Priazovsky» performs the following functions:
1. Protection and study of coastal landscapes of the Azov Sea coast.
2. Providing decent recreation conditions for the guests of the national park.
3. Creation of civilized stationary recreation within the protected area of the district. It means rational exploitation of the balneological resource of local limanic lakes taking into account the time required for the reservoirs to fully restore the reserves of therapeutic muds.
But, local landscapes are formed not only by the sea shore, spits and limans. An important role in the appearance of the park «Priazovsky» is given to biocenoses. These are unique areas of typical and deserted steppe vegetation, grown on chestnut chernozems, with inclusions of solonets and maltings. Lessing’s wattle, tipchak, tonkonog, astragalus, Shrenka’s tulip and herbaceous grasses feel themselves perfectly on these saline, but quite fertile soils. This is one of the 3 plots of the real virgin steppe of Ukraine, saved from the global plowing of «everything and everyone» during the Soviet Union.
Small rodents and bird colonies felt themselves perfectly in this steppe before man came to these lands. Tushkanits and hamsters, otters and hedgehogs, jumping lizards and lake toads became victims of steppe vipers, yellow-bellied skinks, ferrets and foxes. Numerous terns, short-tailed skuas, black-headed gulls and herring martins fed on fish caught in the Sea of Azov.
Thanks to the well-thought-out policy of the Reserve’s administration, the density of these animals in the national park is higher than in the whole north-east of the Crimean peninsula and «unprotected» areas of the Azov Sea coast from the Isthmus to the Berdyansk Spit inclusive. By the way, the office of the «Azov National Park» is located not on the Spit, but in the city of Melitopol.
People who chose vacation in Kirillovka or Berdjansk, get the opportunity to recover in a truly ecologically clean area, as well as to observe the indigenous inhabitants — small shouting, rustling and grumpy «natives» of the Ukrainian steppe. In turn, the administration of the protected land promises that holiday in Priazove tourists will be safe and as comfortable as possible in the conditions of the domestic nature conservation area.