• Camping Equipment Catalogs - Useful Boon To Beginners
• Essential Camping Supplies - List Of Important Items
• Camping Equipment Online UK - Must Know Facts For Campers
• Discounted Camping Gear - Tips To Find Quality Stuff
• Coleman Camping Gear - Campers' Best Friend
• All About Camping Tent Trailers - Live Luxuriously In Simpli

• Cheap Cruises - Cheaply Luxurious!

One of best forms of spending the holidays is to go on a cruise. Usually, cruises last from 3 days to about 3 months. The price range is also different depending on the cruise. Do things such as a cheap cruise even exist? The surprising ans…

• Carnival Cruising - 8 Interesting Tips To Step Up The Fun…!

ld be one exciting and a trembling feeling. People might think about various myths and misconceptions. These false beliefs might turn fun as one horrible thing to do. As a piece of advice, it's very much vital for clearing most uncertaintie…

Home > Exotic Locations >

Oleshkivski Sands (Олешківські піски) in Kher

Just about 30 kilometers east of the city Kherson in Ukraine a vaguely circular sand desert area can be found. The sand desert is about 15 km in diameter, with dunes up to 5 meters high.

It is said to be the largest sand dune area in Europe. It was formerly used as a bombing range by Warsaw Pact pilots and therefore contains numerous unexploded shells. It is believed that the area was a forest until the early 1880s when over grazing by sheep led to deforestation, erosion and desertification. A reforestation program is underway, working from the edges of the sand dunes and inwards.

Oleshkivski pisky (Oleshkivski Sands) is a tourist attraction. It is, in fact, a sort of a desert, “the biggest desert in Europe,” and crossing it may be fun.

For more culturally and historically minded people the attraction can lie in the fact that several centuries ago, the Oleshkivska Cossack Sich (settlement) was situated in the vicinity. The combination of wild nature and the historical site may prove to be luring for tourists with peculiar tastes.

The name comes from the old times (before 1925) when the city Tsyurupinsk was called Oleshko. The sand massif consist of sand with unlimited drift (local residents called them «snowdrifts»).

Oleshkivski sand in its current form was formed quite recently. In the Dnieper lowland there has always exsisted sand, but their advancement covered the steppe vegetation. In the nineteenth century they began with sheep in this area. Baron Falz-Fein, founder of Askania Nova (Wildlife Kherson), owned a huge flock of up to a million heads, which destroyed the grass, made sand advance and wind erosion gave the opportunity for the sand to expand even further. According to Kostychev who studied Oleshkivski Sands in 1880’s, he stated that no more than one hundred years time ago Oleshkivski sands were completely vegetated, with some trees. Kostychev do not believe like some say that  the appearance of the sands are due to climate change in the area. There is no evidence for this statement. He firmly believes that the creation of widespread sand and gravel consolidation is due to increased grassing herds of sheeps.

An article in the Journal “???????????? ????????” from 1837 indicate that there existed over 5000 hectares of forest area on the sands in lower Dnieper River area in 1802 and that it by 1832 it fell to almost to zero.

There has been performed lots of research work to try to consolidate the sands began in late 19th century, with large-scale nature acquired in the years 1830-1840 to enhance forest growth. The period of general butting and giving farmers land (during the period from 1859 -1890) was a disaster for the forests as the area of the sands increased significantly. Recovery was extended and started properly in the 1920's. Sand was stopped at the edges of huge artificial forests with a total area of about 100000 hectares. The region acting Stepnoi branch UkrNII lisoahromelioratsiyi (UkrSRIFA) works and studies the complex problem of the sands, as well as creating obstacles to hinder the expansion of desert.