Photo: Vian, CC BY-SA 4.0
Nature Reserve Fund
The most significant success in nature protection is the granting of the valuable natural area status of protection. Therefore, Ukraine establishes the sites of the Nature Reserve Fund (NRF). Currently there are more than 8400 objects of NRF, covering an area of 6.8% of Ukraine’s territory.
Establishment of new Nature Reserves
We are writing scientific basis documents for establishing new protected areas in locations identified as high-priority for conservation. Based on our studies we have already established approximately 100 protected areas in Kyiv, Donetsk, Kherson, Lviv, Rivne regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Specifically, we were directly involved in the establishment of the Kam’yanska Sich, Nobelskyi, Boykivshchyna, Nizhnodniprovskyi, Oleshkivskyi Piski, Jarilhatskyi, Chornobyl Biosphere Reserve and the expansion of Golosiyivskyi nature park. Overall area of these territories is 408 134 hectares (10% of the whole Nature Reserve Fund of Ukraine).
90% of the area of new protected sites over the last 3 years were established with our direct participation!
Support for the Nature Reserves
We provide volunteer assistance to the Nature Reserves in need. We installed gazebos and boards at the nature trails of the National Park “Jarilhatsky”, developed the website for this park; installed a security wagon at the reserve “Kreidova Flora”, produced a short movie dedicated to this reserve. As a result of charitable fundraising events organized by us, Ukrainians have provided assistance to the national parks in the amount of more than 1 million Ukrainian hryvnias over the last 5 years.
Specialists of our organization are members of all thematic advisory bodies and committees organized by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. They also participate in the scientific and technical councils of the top 10 Ukrainian Nature Reserves. By this means, we contribute our knowledge to make competent decisions by the management of national parks and nature reserves.
Promotion of Nature Reserves
Participants of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group are co-founders and members of the organizing committee “Wiki Loves the Earth”, which has collected photos of the protected areas on Wikipedia for more than 7 years. Over the years, the contest gathered more than 65,000 photos of the protected areas, representing the largest photo database of the protected areas in Ukraine. Inspired by our initiative, the Wikipedias of more than 40 countries have established similar contests in their countries. We have published 6 photo albums using the contest photos and distributed them for free to the national parks. We are also continuing to work to make all of Ukraine’s Nature Reserves mapped in Open Street Map and also have their own pages on Wikipedia.
Contribution to development of legislative and regulatory documents in the field of nature conservation
Representatives of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group authored the Methodological Recommendations for the development of projects to create natural areas and objects of the Natural Reserve Fund of Ukraine (2017), a document that prohibits jeeping in the areas of the Nature Conservation Fund (2015).
We also developed a project of the regional target programme “Nature Conservation in Kyiv region” (2017), which allocated 20 millions of Ukrainian hryvnias from the Kyiv region’s budget for the purposes of Nature Reserves.
Plans for development
We are currently involved in the establishment of 120 new Nature Reserve sites within different regions of Ukraine. Among the most important are the National Parks “Prirpinnya and Chernechy Lys”, “Kholodnyi Yar”, “Podesinnya” and “Girskiy Tikich”.