During the days of the military invasion of the Kyiv region, Russian troops deliberately set fire to forests within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The news was full of heavy fighting in the area of Gostomel, Irpen and Bucha, and the fire was mentioned only because the winds from it blew on Kyiv.
The mentioned territory is a part of the Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve. Approximately 15,000 hectares of specially protected forests were destroyed by fire.
In the heat of war, protected areas continue to be destroyed. Now, when heavy fighting continues in Slobozhanshchina (near the cities of Lyman and Svyatogorsk), no one says that these cities are surrounded by the Holy Mountains National Park. At the same time, the Kherson region covered the base of the Kinburn Spit, which is the part of the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve.
In 1988, this place was the first in the former USSR to receive a UNESCO certificate. In these two unique protected areas, several thousand hectares of forests and other ecosystems are burning at the same time. Previously, the damage caused to the state by fires in these two protected areas alone can be estimated at at least 30 billion hryvnias. So far, we cannot estimate the extent of the fire damage to many small areas of the nature reserve fund.
This study will make sense after the end of the war and the liberation of Ukraine. Moreover, the fires continue.
❗️However, real damage to natural ecosystems cannot be compensated by funds, just as the loss of important ecosystem services for humanity cannot be compensated by funds.
☝️The expansion of the nature reserve fund in the future will be the only option that can be compensated for by nature.
For example, the creation of the long-awaited Iziumska Luka National Park next to the damaged Holy Mountains National Park, as well as the creation of a new Mound Valley National Park near the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve.
Photo by Cydonia A., Holy Mountains
