Editor's note: This piece first appeared at Earth Island Journal. The article profiles a handful of Ukrainian conservationists working in different areas of the country, acting as best they can to preserve cherished public lands, safely, in a time of war. 

Every spring, Ukraine's Desna floodplain comes alive as tens of thousands of ducks, storks, cranes, and other birds pass through on their seasonal migration. In the wetland’s lakes, fish dart below yellow water lilies, while east of the floodplain, pine forests shelter large herds of elk. Bison, lynx, and bear meander through trees tangled in moss, while beavers busy themselves along the rivers. 

These days, however, much of this vibrant landscape, which makes up Ukraine’s Desnyansko-Starogutskyi National Protected Park, is littered with landmines, carved with craters, and charred by fire. The park, which shares a 30-kilometer border with Russia, has been on the frontlines of the Russo-Ukrainian war since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, 2022. 

Desnyansko-Starogutskyi is one among many Ukrainian parks that have suffered deeply since the invasion. Nearly 40 percent of the country’s protected or ecologically important areas have been occupied at some point since the war first began in 2014 in Crimea, though most of the damage occurred after the 2022 invasion. Even those farther from the front have not escaped unscathed. As Mykhailo Drebet, head of science and research for Western Ukraine’s Podilski Tovtry National Park, puts it, “There is no park that is not influenced by war.”

Desnyansko-Starogutskyi National Protected Park / Wikipedia

In a war that has claimed an estimated one million lives and displaced some 10 million Ukrainians, the heart-wrenching human cost has reverberated across the continent. The toll to natural spaces could as well. Thirty-five percent of Europe’s plant and animal species can be found in Ukraine, including 33 percent of its protected species. 

“Ukraine has some of the last wild areas of Europe,” says Gary Cook, at Earth Island Institute, who has been working with Ukrainian conservationists for the past decade. “Talking about protecting the biodiversity of Ukraine, in many ways you’re protecting the biodiversity of all of Europe.”

The toxic legacy of armed conflict is well-documented around the globe. According to a 2009 study, 80 percent of major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 occurred in biodiversity hotspots. Between bombing, logging, and trench-digging, World War I decimated Europe’s forests and soils. A key strategy employed by Iraqi forces during the Gulf War — burning oil wells — polluted the country’s air and water, along with people’s lungs. During the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed the toxic defoliant Agent Orange over the country’s forests, destroying trees and killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans alike. In all of these cases, the costs are still being borne. And the impact will be lasting in Ukraine as well.

“The rebuilding of all of Ukraine, and especially the park system in Ukraine, will be a very long-term event, requiring a lot of international resources,” Cooke says.

Yet, despite the immense damage that’s already been done, and the bleak prospect of more to come, there are many in Ukraine who are already looking to the future. They are envisioning what recovery may look like, both for the country’s people and its ecosystems.

In September, I had the opportunity to sit down with four such individuals. They were traveling through California as guests of Earth Island Institute, meeting with other conservationists, and drawing attention to the varied ways in which the war is impacting Ukrainian parks, the people who work in them, and the very nature of conservation work in Ukraine. Here are their stories.

Serhii Kubrakov

National Park Director

Desnyansko-Starogutskyi National Nature Park

On February 24, 2022, just as the sun began to rise in Eastern Ukraine, Desnyansko-Starogutskyi National Nature Park became part of the frontline of the war. “From the first hours of the war, our territory was under attack,” park Director Serhii Kubrakov says, speaking through a translator. The park, located directly along the country’s border with Russia, has been on the frontline ever since. 

The toll of that combat — in the form of bombs, missiles, fires, and drones — is seared into the landscape. An educational retreat building for children in the park has been leveled. A scientific research station has been destroyed. Several conservation offices, as well as park infrastructure like bridges and roads, have been damaged. In some places, large-scale fires — many, Kubrakov says, ignited by shelling — have burned through the forests. In others, trees have been felled by Ukrainian troops to hamper the progression of Russian soldiers and equipment. Much of the land — which includes a Ramsar designated Wetland of International Importance and valuable habitat for large mammals like moose, bison, and lynx — is littered with mines. (By one estimate, as much as 98 percent of the park could now be a minefield. Ukraine is currently the most mined country in the world.)

“Huge territories are impacted,” Kubrakov says. “Much of the land is blocked off or totally inaccessible to park staff and visitors.” 

It’s not just the land that has suffered. Though Kubrakov remains at his post, many park staff have left since the war began, some for Western Ukraine, others abroad. Three have left to serve in the military. Kubrakov evacuated his own family to Western Ukraine at the start to the war, moving through dangerous Russian-occupied territory in the process, before returning to work. 

For those who remain, the nature of the job has changed. Much conservation work simply cannot be done due to the inaccessibility of large portions of the park. Instead, staff test the soil near missile strikes for contaminants. They clean up debris after attacks. They help evacuate locals from the area. They use satellite data to monitor the impact of the war.

None of this work is risk-free. At times, Kubrakov and his staff, who have no body armor or weapons, have found themselves in the midst of active combat, hiding from the shelling. “Nothing is safe,” he adds. “And obviously it impacts everyone, including me.”

Despite all this, Kubrakov, who has worked in the park for 25 years, is sticking around: He just signed a new three-year contract. He has mixed feelings about the decision, but says he feels responsible for the people in the park, and for the work he’s taken on there. 

“We’ve done a lot, but a lot needs to be done,” he says. “There are a lot of dreams that have not come true yet. I hope for victory, and sooner than later coming back to peaceful life that will allow us to restore everything that was broken.”

Valeriia Kolodezhna

Communications Specialist 

Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group

For decades, Ukraine's 30-meter Kakhovka Dam obstructed the Dnipro River and created one of the world’s largest reservoirs, a vast, shallow lake that, in places, stretched as far as the eye could see. The reservoir displaced thousands when the Soviets built it, in the 1950s, but soon became central to the regional economy and culture. 

In June of 2023, the dam exploded. The reservoir rapidly drained, flooding villages, killing hundreds of people, and displacing thousands more. Soon, the lakebed was dry and dusty. (Russia is widely believed to have orchestrated the explosion, and experts have described the act as a war crime, a violation of both human rights and environmental law.)

“We expected a situation quite similar to the Great Salt Lake,” Valeriia Kolodezhna, a communications specialist with the nonprofit Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG), says, referring to the dwindling of Utah’s signature lake. “But we had something different.”

What they saw was a remarkable example of natural rewilding. A year later, the former reservoir was filled with a lush riparian forest. Willows and black poplars, some already several meters tall, dominated the landscape, interspersed with bogs and streams. It is, Kolodezhna says, a catastrophic case that also provides “hope for our future.”

What will become of the former reservoir in the long term, however, is yet-to-be determined. One option is to rebuild the dam. Another option — which Kolodezhna and her colleagues at UNCG are hoping to realize — is to preserve the vast new forest. 

“We believe it would be a great choice to protect all of this,” Kolodezhna says. 

Flooding in Kherson after the destruction of the kakhovka dam / Wikipedia

But she knows it isn’t a straightforward decision. The reservoir is embedded in local culture. Some communities have been left without water since the dam collapsed. And contacting locals to get their perspective on the matter is a herculean task. Some were displaced by the floods and others have fled the area since it is now part of the warfront. 

For the same reason, it isn’t easy to gather data to make the case for a protected area, Kolodezhna says. Entering the region requires special permission from the government, as well as a military escort. And even after the war, conservation work will be complicated: The area will long be marred by hidden munitions. 

Complicated as the effort may be, Kolodezhna is committed. “I see and feel a huge connection with this land in a cultural [sense], because our Ukrainian democracy was founded in those areas,” she says, referring to Cossack communities that were established in the region around the fifteenth century and are linked closely with Ukraine’s fight for independence. 

She believes this history might be compelling to others too, particularly given the current war. And she is working to share it. For a long time, she says, “we were silent, for a lot of reasons mostly caused not by Ukrainians. We need to talk.”

Mykhailo Drebet

Head of Science and Research

Podilski Tovtry National Park

When Mykhailo Drebet was in college, he wanted to study birds. But when the flocks migrated south during his first fall in school, he soon found himself exploring caves. In the process, he discovered what would become his enduring research focus: bats. “They are my love and my work,” he says, speaking through a translator.

Drebet now serves as the head of science and research at Podilski Tovtry National Nature Park in Western Ukraine where, among other things, he helps map bat migration routes in Europe. He has also established several educational programs that he believes have helped shift public opinion of the underappreciated animals. 

But like nearly everything in Ukraine, this work has been impacted by the war. “I used to do research all over Ukraine on bats, and now the eastern parts are not available for research,” he says. They are too close to the frontline. 

Podilski Tovtry National Nature Park in Western Ukraine /  Moahim - Wikipedia

Drebet’s work has evolved in other ways since the 2022 invasion, as well. The West has become home to millions of Ukrainians fleeing the frontline, some of whom have settled in and around Podilski Tovtry National Park. (In Ukraine, people can live within the boundaries of national parks. Podilski Tovtry includes a 100,000-person city that predated the park’s establishment, in 1996.) When those displaced by the current war moved here, Drebet and his colleagues began to consider how they could better serve them.

They made park services free. They began enrolling displaced children in summer camps. They started collecting essential items to send east to those still living in or near combat zones. They also started special programming for veterans returning from the war, including tours of the park and trips to search for fossils.

“At first, when we thought about doing this program, [we thought] you know, they are adults. It might not be something fitting for them,” Drebet said of the fossil hunts. “But they are very curious, and they behave like kids, going and really enjoying finding things and learning more about them.”

Supporting Ukraine’s soldiers has become “priority number one” for park staff, Drebet adds, noting that it’s important for him and his colleagues to adapt and learn new ways of doing things during wartime. “We are looking forward to developing more programs that will help veterans improve their psychological health after coming back from the frontlines, and using nature for that. We would like to be in the middle of this process of nature healing.”

Despite the new and evolving wartime focus of his work, Drebet hasn’t forgotten his research and public education on bats. “I will always find time for that,” he says.

Hanna Kuzo

National Park Consultant and Lead Communications Officer 

Frankfurt Zoological Society offices in Ukraine

Hanna Kuzo's dream is simple: an outdoor education program in every protected area of Ukraine. It’s also ambitious. Even before the war, park budgets in Ukraine were low, and environmental education wasn’t a high priority, she says. But Kuzo is undeterred, and in her role as a national park consultant and lead communication officer for the Frankfurt Zoological Society’s offices in Ukraine, she’s starting by supporting the development of educational programs in 12 protected areas in the country’s Carpathian Mountains. That includes providing teacher trainings, facilitating student transportation, and more. 

In some ways, the war has made this effort even more pressing. Summer camps in several of the parks that Kuzo collaborates with have provided a needed escape to the children of soldiers, as well as to children who have lost parents in the war or who have been displaced from the conflict in the east. “The idea ... was to provide a place for those kids who suffered heartily,” Kuzo says. “Even if your dad is still alive, but you are not sure if tomorrow he will call you, it is very stressful.”

The Carpathian National Nature Park (NNP), the first and largest protected area in Ukraine, is home to dense primeval forests, glacial reservoirs, fast-flowing rivers /  Balkhovitin - Wikipedia

Campers study bugs, or rivers, or trees, topics that can instill an appreciation for the outdoors and also offer distraction from the dangers of the conflict and the stress of their everyday lives. They also enjoy a break from the blare of the country’s air alarm system, which sounds frequently in cities across Ukraine, but cannot be heard in the Carpathians. And while outdoor educators don’t have the skills to provide the children any trauma therapy, “nature is doing its therapy,” Kuzo says, and offering some joy amid the tragedy of war. 

Kuzo’s passion for environmental education persists despite the steep toll the war has taken on her personally. Her parents’ apartment was partially destroyed by shelling just this past September. (They weren’t home at the time.) She’s lost friends and students since the invasion. She laments the loss of ornithologists, all too rare in the country, and what that will mean for the field. She has colleagues who are currently in the army, and one of her closest friends is on the frontline. “With all these things, when you adapt to that, you are developing a heart of stone,” she says. “You live in darkness all the time.”

That darkness can make it hard to plan for the future. “I’m trying to do my best,” she says. “I’m trying to plan. But, you know, at the same time I realize that we can die the next day … Jesus. I’m not sure if I can plan something for next year because I may not be alive. It’s just one missile.”

 When she has a chance to recharge from her “dark mode,” such as during her recent trip to California — which afforded her the opportunity to see there are those who believe in a brighter world — she sees some light. At times like those, she can bring herself to believe “maybe it will be okay.”