What is happening at the bottom of the former Kakhov reservoir today?

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A few months earlier, it would have been difficult for me to believe that there would be an opportunity to look at the Kakhov disaster from such an unexpected angle.

Together with my colleagues, I have already written about the possibilities of restoration on the site of the former Kakhovsky Reservoir – Veliky Lug, the largest natural forest of the Steppe zone of Ukraine. During the years of Soviet rule, Ukrainians even forgot the true meaning of the Ukrainian word “meadow”.

“Meadow” is a floodplain forest near the river, at a time when “onion” is a wet grassy ecosystem near a river or in overmoistened regions.

In the Russian language, there is only “lug”, which means the Ukrainian “bow”. So during the existence of reservoirs and Russification, we have already forgotten that Velikiy Lug is a forest. The last description of this forest can be found in the books of the repressed 1930s (for example, in the works of M. Akimov: p.35).

But recently, everything has changed so much that it is hard to believe – hopes have already become reality.

If you look at modern photos from the bottom of the former Kakhov reservoir, it becomes obvious that it is actively overgrown with vegetation, although only 3 months have passed since the day of the terrorist attack. This is clearly visible in satellite images and in the first analytical studies of scientists.

In the end, we all saw a photo and a video of the flag of Ukraine, which was unfurled at the site of the former Kakhovsky Reservoir by the workers of the Kamianska Sich National Nature Park.

What do you see in this photo?

The flag at the bottom of the Kakhovsky Reservoir

Maybe it will be easier for you to understand what exactly is happening at the reservoir if you watch the video?

You probably already guessed that almost all the plants that we see in the photo and video are young trees, poplars and willows. It is these types of trees that have grown along the Dnieper for centuries and are adapted to life in the local conditions.

How did it happen? It seems that God does love Ukraine, and even in the face of such an unprecedented terrorist attack (and indeed, this is the largest hydroelectric disaster in history and the largest terrorist attack involving dams on rivers), we are still lucky.

It is at this time, at the beginning of June, that the willows and poplars sow their seeds en masse. Billions of seeds fly with the wind currents in all directions and, having hit the surface of the reservoir, which was rapidly losing water, were evenly distributed in waves over the moistened substrate. Three months were enough for the young trees to reach human height in some places. You can imagine what kind of forest will grow here in a year!

Let’s look at the photo of my colleague, the executive director of the public organization “Ecology-Pravo-Lyudyna”, who visited the territory where the flag was unfurled.

How are you willows? It seems that they have never grown so fast in the history of Ukraine!

So it is clear that the bottom of the former reservoir no longer threatens to become a desert, as officials of the Ministry of Environment mistakenly said about it, but is turning into a huge young forest at an incredibly fast pace. The area of ​​the territory that is now overgrown with forest is actually equal to the entire area of ​​forests in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Currently, the implementation of the President’s Program for planting 1 billion trees continues in Ukraine. We have already written that its implementation currently looks like a fiction. And its implementation often only harms nature.

But the restoration of Veliky Lug on the site of the former Kakhovsky Reservoir can help implement this program without spending money and ensuring the restoration of this unique and historically valuable area.

Unfortunately, the Government, talking about the need to preserve the environment, for the most part declares its commitment to another solution – to restore the Kakhovskaya HPP, although its former bottom is now a young forest.

In a few years, when it becomes possible to hypothetically refill the reservoir with water, it will already be a several-year-old forest of a billion trees. Such actions can become the largest one-time destruction of forests in the history of independent Ukraine, which will ideally fall under the concept of “ecocide”. We hardly have the moral right to allow this.

Oleksiy Vasyliuk, Ukrainian nature protection group, specially for UP. Life

Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

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