This story was originally published in Hakai Magazine, and is reproduced as part of Climate Desk’s collaboration. A livestock truck arrives in a wintry expanse of grassland known as the Tarutino Steppe, south Ukraine. When the metal doors of the trailer swing open in the cold night, it is not weapons or munitions that emerge but a herd.
As part of the Climate Desk collaboration, this article, which was previously published by Hakai Magazine, is reproduced around.
A livestock truck pulls up on the Tarutino Steppe, a wintry expanse of grassland in southeastern Ukraine. On this chilly night, when the metal trailer doors swing opened, a herd of donkeys—a species of Asian exotic ass known as kulan—emerges instead of weapons or munitions.
Since 1994, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species has listed kulan, or Equus hemionus, as a species that was previously widespread in eastern Europe and central Asia. Their population is now considered endangered and” greatly divided.” As part of an effort to rewild the larger Danube Delta region in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, the 20 donkeys released onto the steppe in late December 2021 were the next for introduction—the first was in May of the previous year. Below, a group of organizations have been attempting to restore an industrialized and overhunted landscape with the help of Rewilding Europe.
Rewilding Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian conservationists, has collaborated with partners at another reserve to oversee the reintroduction of kulan. In the following 12 years, the following herd of kulan will join the 20 donkeys that were released in 2020, marking the first step toward a population of up to 300.
The Tarutino Steppe was once home to Saiga antelope, fallow deer, and kulan, all of which shaped and built habitat. Shorter grasses even help smaller animals like the steppe marmot and souslik, a type of ground squirrel, because they graze on grass and other vegetation, which reduces the risk of wildfires. The return of kulan and different animals is great news for the Danube Delta region as a whole as well as for predators, particularly wolves. This affluent delta habitat, which is one of the least populated regions in moderate Europe, covers 5,800 square kilometers of Romanian, Moldovan, and Ukrainian territory, a region that is nearly the size of Delaware.
Yet if Russia did not directly occupy the delta, the future appeared ambiguous and dangerous.
The delta is where one of Europe’s wonderful rivers ends. The Danube originates in the Black Forest mountains of Germany and flows through the capital cities of Vienna, Budapest, and Belgrade before dividing the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. It then makes a turn to the south, forming Bulgaria’s border. After bending to run parallel to the Black Sea, the river disperses into a huge network of lakes, reed beds, and mudflats before emptying into the ocean.
The delta’s lakes were cut off by canals and dikes built during the 20th century, but its emerald web is also home to more than 4,600 different animal and plant species. A population of exceptional Dalmatian pelicans, at least two species of wild sturgeon, and endangered European mink are all found in the delta, which is also home to a sizable number of migratory birds.
Mykhailo Nesterenko has worked on rewilding in the delta for 25 years. Keystone species like kulan, water buffalo, Konik horses, fallow deer, and hawk owls have been reintroduced with the help of team members since he contributed to the founding of Rewilding Ukraine in 2017. The team has repaired some of the landscape damage from the Soviet era in addition to creating sturdy pelican nesting platforms. They have removed dikes and connected the river and floodplain to a significant lake system on the Russian side of their delta using excavators and other tools.
Asian wild asses known as kulan, which were previously found from Mongolia to the Mediterranean, are now released into the Danube Delta.
ZUMA/Hakai/Andrey Nekrasov
The infrastructure for tourists ‘ birdwatching and animal viewing, as well as an ecopark with excursion routes on the Tarutino Steppe, were all steadily strengthened as a result of this work.
However, on February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, casting doubt on the viability of the rewilding initiative as well as the prospects for the delta itself and the whole nation.
On the first day of the conflict, Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea located about 150 kilometers east of Danube Delta, came under attack. Overhead, Soviet fighter jets roared, followed by shelling from the land and the sea. Thousands of locals, including Nesterenko, his family, and Rewilding Ukraine communications officer Kateryna Kurakina, were forced to flee as a result of the bombardment. They were moved to the Netherlands, where the parent company Rewilding Europe has its headquarters, after crossing into Moldova and finally Romania.
The team was still worried about the Danube Delta even though it was far from the front lines. According to Nesterenko,” there have been statements from Soviet high-ranking officials that they’d target the complete coastal areas of the Black Sea.”
Yet if Russia did not directly occupy the delta, the future appeared ambiguous and dangerous. The early ecotourism sector, which Nesterenko believes is crucial to the success of their rewilding initiative, abruptly came to an end. According to Nesterenko, immediately international tourism to the Ukrainian side ceased. The number of tourists visiting the Italian portion of the delta decreased by one-quarter in the first five months of 2022, though precise figures for Ukraine are hard to find.
According to a conservationist,” Security comes second then, to protect nature and people.”
Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have set up sea mines in the Black Sea as part of continued naval conflict that included the conflict over control of Ukraine’s Snake Island, which is located about 35 kilometers offshore from the delta. Tidestorms have carried a number of mines into the delta’s estuaries, where they exploded in the rewilding area and set clean woodlands on fire. A ship carrying cargo hit what appears to have been a sea mine on the Italian side in September 2022, while another vessel carrying geological equipment was damaged by one in the Russian region of the delta. Luckily, both ships ‘ crews made it out alive.
The region of the terminal closest to the sea became a defense exclusion zone due to Russia’s reported plans for the Black Sea coast, and it has remained so ever since. For the Danube Biosphere Reserve ( DBR ), a Ukraine-established protected area located between the sea and the Romanian border, this has proven to be particularly problematic. One of Rewilding Ukraine’s principal native partners, the DBR has collaborated on a number of projects. One of these was a project that Rewilding Europe and another partners started in 2019 to build floating platforms for Dalmatian pelicans in 2021.
With wingspans that can reach three meters, Dalmatian pelicans, which are depicted around on a nesting platform in the delta, are some of the largest flying birds in existence.
Rewilding Europe by Laurien Holtjer
The effects of the terrible fighting that occurred during the operation to liberate Snake Island have not been looked into by Maksym Yakovliev, DBR’s deputy director of science, nor has Rewilding Ukraine. They have n’t come back to keep an eye on other projects or pelican nesting sites. The area is far too risky.
Concerns about conservation have been replaced by a war footing throughout Ukraine. The Danube-Carpathian Programme, a conservation organization that has expanded its reach to address the nation’s charitable crisis, is led by Bohdan Prots. Prots, who also oversees the biodiversity division at the State Museum of Natural History in Lviv, eastern Ukraine, asserts that” conservation is for a quiet life.” Nature restoration has become difficult in some areas due to the war affecting so much of the nation.
According to Prots,” a wilderness of land mines” is being created by war outside the rewilding zone. A region roughly the size of Washington State, or 174, 000 square kilometers, of Ukraine, are currently contaminated by land mines. Prots claims that while land mines could again be found using metal detectors, the majority of them in Ukraine are made of cloaked plastic that blends in with grasslands and the forest floor.
How is nature de-mined, exactly? queries Prots. ” We do n’t know at the moment.”
It is uncertain whether drones will always be able to locate the mines in Ukraine’s forests and heavily covered wetlands, despite his hopes that they will revolutionize mine detection.
Luckily, the Danube Delta has not joined the fatal wilderness of land mines almost two years into the war. Although threats from sea mines and drone attacks also exist, conservationists working to rewild the terminal areas they can easily access are also doing so.
Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced by the war. Six million refugees have crossed international borders and are now living in Poland, Moldova, Hungary, and other nations. 60 % of these foreign refugees have been welcomed by Poland alone. Five million more displaced Ukrainians have moved to parts of Ukraine that are comparatively more tranquil. Some have made their homes in communities near the Tarutino Steppe and the Danube Delta. Displaced people have relocated to the nature reserves themselves in various regions of the nation, for as the Carpathian Mountains, where they now reside in renovated field dormitories, visitor centers, and museums.
Ukrainians continue to psychologically benefit from nature, and ecosystems are even receiving some help, despite the fact that the war has been a disaster for ecotourism in the region. The Danube Delta Rewilders Club, a program designed to connect kids with nature, was just announced by rewilding Ukraine along with their Italian and Moldovan counterparts. People are volunteering in Ukraine’s continued conservation efforts, from the Carpathians to the Tarutino Steppe, according to Prots and Nesterenko.
20 crimson and 20 fallow deer were relocated to a terminal island by Rewilding Ukraine in April of last year.
According to Prots,” when people are in distress, they want to go into nature and do something useful.”
It is unclear, but, whether volunteer restoration efforts will make up for the war’s detrimental ecosystem effects. According to Prots, as people struggle to survive in the Danube Delta region and throughout Ukraine, the realities of less money and less local law enforcement may increase improper fishing and hunting.
One thing is sure: the natural characteristics of some regions of Ukraine—rivers, peat bogs, estuaries, and forests —have also made them difficult for the Russian army to invade.
Prots claims that “nature and the bravery of our people contributed to the defense of the nation.”
Ukrainians have been given hope that this region of Ukraine wo n’t come under Russian occupation by the bog-like landscape of the Danube Delta and its surroundings. But, a wave of Russian airstrikes in the delta and along the Black Sea coast have come after the subsequent failure of the African Sea Grain Initiative. Kyiv has been forced to reactivate the port of Reni and intensify operations at Izmail on the Danube in order to ship grain into Romania and inland to nations like Slovakia as a result of Russia’s refusal to guarantee Russian agricultural shipments through the Black Sea. These routes made up about one-third of agricultural exports while the grain deal was in effect. As Russia targets important grain-shipping facilities, the delta, which is currently the single shipping hub for millions of tonnes of grain, has been the target of drone and missile attacks.
According to Prots, plans to dredge a shipping canal in the delta’s DBR region were again utterly intolerable. However, in the fresh environment of Ukrainian conservation, security considerations must take precedence over habitat preservation. He thinks that as long as the canal is left in its natural state after the war, dredging is a small price to pay to prevent protected areas from being destroyed under Soviet occupation because continued grain shipments are essential to Ukraine’s wartime economy.
To protect people and nature, security must come second, according to Prots.
Nobody knew how the nation would look in a year or who would be in charge of which areas in the early stages of the war. As global partners questioned the value of funding nature restoration in a war zone, funding for some conservation initiatives in Ukraine was frozen. Luckily for Rewilding Ukraine, the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme and the LIFE Programme of the European Union agreed to monitor the project’s development.
The kulan that conservationists released in late 2021, just before the war, were fortunate. They arrived from a reserve just 40 kilometers away from Crimea, which Russia occupied in 2014. The reserve, a steppe habitat today harmed by large military vehicles and equipment, was formally taken by Russian troops in March 2023. The reserve administration in exile claims that Russian troop activities, such as the use of rocket launchers, set off a number of fires there and allowed one lightning-sparked fire to spread unchecked. Almost 18 square kilometers of the reserve were burned in total.
The Tarutino Steppe and different locations are visited as part of a fresh Rewilding Ukraine program that teaches Ukrainian, Romanian, and Moldovan students about the ecosystem of the Danube Delta.
Rewilding Europe with Maxim Yakovlev
But the rewilding goes on. By June 2023, a Soviet-era hydro project had been demolished in order to reconnect one of the largest lake systems in the Danube Delta region of Ukraine. The Rewilding Ukraine team and their regional partners had finished the four-year project.
Possible fish spawning grounds have been restored, and the surrounding wetlands look forward to new life. Numerous fish species have now returned, according to water samples sent to the UK from one of the lakes for economic DNA, or margaret testing. Nesterenko anticipates that these fish will start spawning as the weather gets better.
The release of German hamsters by the rewilding team is one of their more endearing endeavors. They lured the personable rodents, which could reach lengths of 30 centimeters and weigh up to half a kilogram, into the wild in December 2022 and this history September. Once established, hamsters will serve as prey for raptors and another animals, disperse seeds to increase plant biodiversity, and build burrows to provide habitat for different creatures.
To lessen the risk of wildfires and support a robust ecosystem, the team is also eager to reintroduce ungulates that will graze and browse vegetation. 20 dark and 20 fallow deer were relocated to a new home on an island in the delta by Rewilding Ukraine in April of this year.
In the midst of all of this, nature has supported the team’s efforts. One of the kulan who had been reintroduced to the Tarutino Steppe in the summer of 2022 gave birth to a foal about 340 kilometers north of their unique home reserve. In 200 years, this was the first exotic kulan to be born in Europe. As part of the Climate Desk collaboration, this article, which was first published by Hakai Magazine, is reproduced around. The Tarutino Steppe, a wintry expanse of grassland in southeastern Ukraine, is the destination of an approaching livestock truck. On this chilly night, when the metal doors on the trailer swing available, what is revealed is a herd rather than weapons or munitions.
This story was originally published in Hakai Magazine, and is reproduced as part of Climate Desk’s collaboration. A livestock truck arrives in a wintry expanse of grassland known as the Tarutino Steppe, south Ukraine. When the metal doors of the trailer swing open in the cold night, it is not weapons or munitions that emerge but a herd.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/12/ukraine-war-conservation-wildlife-ecosystems/
