Don’t rebuild the dam: Ukrainian experts urge Unesco to protect site uncovered by Russian sabotage — SkimNews
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- Over 100 Ukrainian NGOs have formally backed a bid to designate the former Kakhovka reservoir bed—the "great meadow"—as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with a letter of intent already sent and cooperation sought from Ukraine's culture ministry.
- The 2,155 sq km territory, submerged since the Nova Kakhovka dam's completion in 1956, has regenerated into wetlands, grassland and islands since the dam was destroyed on 6 June 2023, with biologist Pavlo Oliinyk reporting trees already growing up to 7 meters tall in the drained bed.
- Archaeologists around Khortytsia island, which lies just downstream of Zaporizhzhia, have uncovered Bronze Age antler tools, Scythian ceramic shards, a Byzantine amphora, an 18th-century anchor and a single-tree-trunk boat preserved by a millennium of river immersion.
- The Ukrainian government has launched a pilot project with state-owned Ukrhydroenergo to prepare groundwork for reconstructing the dam after the war, directly conflicting with the preservationist campaign that wants the reservoir never restored to irrigate southern farmlands.
- Valeriy Nefedov, the lead archaeologist who has campaigned since the 1990s to dismantle the dam, called building the original structure "the first crime" and its 2023 destruction "the second," warning reconstruction would constitute a "third ecocide."
- Khortytsia, a 12.5 km-long rocky island at the head of the floodplain, carries profound symbolic weight as the first stronghold of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks, with traces of human habitation stretching to the Mesolithic era.
Why it matters: The UNESCO bid forces a post-war policy choice between restoring Soviet-era irrigation for southern farmland and preserving a regenerated ecosystem layered with thousands of years of archaeological remains. With over 100 NGOs formally supporting protection and the government already running a Ukrhydroenergo reconstruction pilot, the decision will permanently reshape both Ukraine's agricultural capacity and the cultural heritage landscape around the Dnipro.
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