Important state decisions are always preceded by a long process. On October 24, 2024, the Parliamentary Committee on Environmental Policy (Komitet Verkhovnoi Rady Ukrainy z pytan ekolohichnoi polityky) held hearings on “Legal foundations for an effective system of protected areas and sites as a basis for the preservation and restoration of biodiversity: pressing issues.”
The hearings gathered leading specialists in Ukrainian conservation, including scientists, activists, politicians, and employees of protected area institutions and high-level government bodies. The committee’s recommendations were recently approved by a Committee decision, which gained the force of a binding regulatory act.
Among the many crucial decisions were legislative initiatives to simplify the establishment of protected areas, create a central body to manage protected areas and biodiversity, increase funding for the Protected Areas Fund (Pryrodno-Zapovidnyi Fond, PZF), raise salaries for PZF employees, and more.
We want to highlight one specific directive given by the committee to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources (Min dovkillia) and local authorities: to develop and submit to the President of Ukraine materials for the establishment of new protected areas and the expansion of existing ones, including on temporarily occupied territories.
The last time the parliamentary environmental committee adopted a similar decision was in 2008. Over the next two years, Ukraine established 28 new national nature parks and 2 nature reserves, marking the most significant period of protected area development in Ukrainian history.
Now, a new list of important territories has been announced that require protection. Which protected areas is the Committee initiating the creation of?
- “Dolina Kurhaniv” reserve (1,312 ha) in the Kherson region, a temporarily occupied territory.
- “Kalmiuskyi” (45,000 ha, temporarily occupied territory), “Kryvolutskyi,” and “Sidorivskyi” (liberated territories) reserves in the Donetsk region, and reserves on the Donetsk Ridge in the Luhansk region (over 60,000 ha).
- “Chornyi Lis” (Black Forest) National Nature Park (NNP) in the Kirovohrad region, which would be the first NNP in the region, with its establishment dating back to 1926.
- “Pryirpinnya and Chernechyi Lis” NNP and “Nivetskyi” reserve, the most anticipated and significant planned protected areas in the Kyiv region.
- “Irdynskyi” NNP in the Cherkasy region, which also has an almost 100-year history of establishment that has not yet been finalized.
- “Skhidnyi Svydovets” and “Skhyly Borzhavy” reserves in the Zakarpattia region.
- The expansion of existing national parks: “Verkhovynskyi” and “Hutsulshchyna” in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, “Kremenetski Hory” NNP in the Ternopil region, Rivne Nature Reserve and “Dermano-Ostrohskyi” NNP in the Rivne region, “Slobozhanskyi” and “Dvorichanskyi” NNPs (de-occupied territories) in the Kharkiv region, “Zacharovanyi Krai” and “Uzhanskyi” NNPs in the Zakarpattia region, “Dzharylhachkyi” NNP (temporarily occupied territory) in the Kherson region, “Vyzhnytskyi” NNP in the Chernivtsi region, and “Skolivski Beskydy” and “Pivnichne Podillya” NNPs in the Lviv region.
- Reserves on the territory of the former Kakhovka Reservoir.
The establishment of these protected areas is not only timely but has also been long-awaited in many regions of Ukraine. Each of these sites is well-known to scientists, frequently appears in the news, and is a source of concern for many public activists.
The work required to establish or expand each of these protected areas has already involved significant human and intellectual resources. In every case, there were obstacles that prevented these territories from being declared protected areas earlier, such as construction plans, logging, or officials simply being unwilling to engage in the establishment of protected areas.
However, these circumstances do not make the territories themselves any less valuable, nor does it make the need to preserve them less urgent.
The Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group declares its readiness to assist the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the parliamentary environmental committee in the justification and work required to establish each of these protected areas.
