Velyky Burluk, a township in Kharkiv oblast, marked its 330th anniversary late last summer. It is the center of a remote administrative district with a friendly and hardworking populace characteristic of the whole Kharkiv oblast. What makes it different from the other places in the district is its coat of arms, approved several years ago by a session of the district council. In addition to the invariable wheat ears, it portrays two marmots, since Velyky Burluk accommodates a unique regional landscape park known as the Velyky Burluk Steppe.
Its main character is the marmot, known in Slobozhanshchyna as baibak. It is a robust and rather large rodent that can weigh up to ten kilograms. Its fur can have a variety of shades, mostly red with black spots, but also black, even grayish blue. It looks very funny and tries to live out of man’s way. It feeds on green grass, of which there is enough and to spare in the gullies and ravines. It does not raid farms, except when man is silly enough to plow a gully and plant sunflowers there. In such cases the marmot understands that it is entitled to compensation for having lost some of its territory. The marmot is very much family oriented and an extremely industrious creature. Every den has several compartments (including a bedroom and even toilet), so that three generations — parents, children, and grandchildren — can hibernate every winter. Parents show their children the door the next year, meaning they must build their own home. Perhaps the family spirit explains the presence of two marmots on the coat of arms.
Marmots are often domesticated in the villages adjoining the landscape park. Marmots living at large are not cowardly but cautious, digging family as well as reserve dens. When domesticated early, a marmot becomes a quite dedicated member of the family, except when September comes. The marmot then wants down the cellar to dig a den and hibernate until March or even April.
Anatoly Avdieyev, chief specialist of the local hunting and fishing farm, says that man has always been attracted to the marmot. Moslems in Central Asia, for example, consider it a sacred animal because the rodent, leaving its den in the morning, stands on its hind legs, turns to the sun and washes its snout with its front paws, as though delivering a Moslem prayer. In Uzbekistan, the marmot is believed to be an incarnation of a man condemned for indecent behavior, so it cannot be killed. Islam allowed hunting marmots as “younger brothers” only as an exception to help a wounded or ailing older brother. Marmot fat is an extremely effective medicine; it heals burns, frostbite, wounds, ulcers, gastritis, and is good for treating tuberculosis and many other diseases. In fact, it is even better than badger fat.
Incidentally, Russia exports marmot fat as a medical product and foodstuff, while hunters in Kharkiv oblast could only convince the sanitary authority to allow them to produce even inedible fat.
Of course, hunting marmots takes on a certain character. Zinayida Hlushchenko, manager of the Malynivka local private farming enterprise, says she cannot make herself eat marmot meat, even though she knows it tastes good and there are many marmots around — as well as poachers setting all kinds of traps (snares, spears down marmot dents, shooting them with small-bore guns. Poaching is this area’s bane.
Marmots also suffer from new landowners plowing up their plots bordering on the landscape park and burning stubble, contrary to all interdictions. This summer burning stubble near the village of Nesterivka ignited dry grass in a gully being part of the park area, so local residents and university students had to fight the fire. The farm management got off with paying some fines.
Others, however, do very useful things here. There is a daytime department of the Kharkiv National University operating in the landscape park, studying marmots and keeping track of their population, using special formulas because the funny creatures ignore all census regulations. To date, there are 49,775 marmots in Kharkiv regions, including 23,500 in Velyky Burluk district, 12,080 in Dvorychna district, plus several thousand in Kupyansk and Shevchenkove districts. In the early twentieth century, when the steppe started being plowed, the whole species was threatened with extinction, so that Velyky Burluk’s population numbered only 200 marmots.
Over the past couple of years, hunters have shown an increasing interest in the marmot. The regional hunting and fishing farm has been receiving a growing number of orders from Poltava, Sumy, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Luhansk — all for live rodents! The funny creature, even though born in and fond of the Velyky Burluk steppe, is not an inveterate patriot and effectively masters new territories, especially if timely resettled, so new families can be formed and homes built.
Borys Zabolotny, deputy head of the Kharkiv regional state directorate for ecology and natural resources, refers to expert findings saying that 3,300 marmots can be moved to new territories without damaging the local population. The directorate also monitors hunting activities. The relevant Kharkiv office operates only on the strength of authorizations issued by the Ministry of Economic Resources. Because such authorizations were made available only on July 4 of this year, only 425 marmots have been caught instead of the planned 980. They were transferred to Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, and southern Kharkiv oblast. “The Ministry of Ecology explains the delay by the hunting season being still ahead. But we don’t hunt them to kill, only to resettle them,” complaints the chief hunting specialist.
Of course, settling marmots in new gullies and ravines is a hunter’s business in the first place, but there will be no organized hunting until the population reaches the required number. This will take quite some time. Meanwhile, the hunters of Kharkiv oblast are on a noble mission, saving the marmots that once nearly died out in our steppe.
