Askania-Nova

Askania-Nova was established in 1898 in Kherson province, in southern Ukraine, and is the oldest protected area in the country and one of the oldest in the world. It was founded by Friedrich Falz-Fein, a landowner of German origin who set aside a portion of his land from farming and grazing at a time when the plough was advancing across the whole Pontic steppe.

That decision saved what is today its greatest value: some thousands of hectares of feather grass steppe that has never been ploughed, the only expanse of its kind left in Europe. The rest of the Pontic steppe, which extended from Romania to Kazakhstan, was turned into cropland through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The vegetation is of grasses of the genera Stipa and Festuca, with an intense spring flowering and a floristic composition that cannot be repeated.

Falz-Fein also created a zoological park and an arboretum where he acclimatised steppe fauna from around the world, and Askania-Nova remains a reference centre for breeding in semi-freedom: here is kept one of the most important populations of the takhi, extinct in the wild and later reintroduced to Mongolia from centres such as this one, alongside saigas, bison, antelope and bustards. UNESCO recognised it as a biosphere reserve in 1984.