As emergency managers in southern Ukraine evacuate people there from disastrous flooding caused by the mysterious breach of a major dam, conservation scientists are pondering the effects on the region’s plants and animals.
As emergency managers in southern Ukraine evacuate people there from disastrous flooding caused by this week’s mysterious breach of a major dam, conservation scientists are pondering the effects on the region’s plants and animals. The collapse of a section of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam has released a torrent that is only beginning to subside, leaving downstream nature reserves underwater and vast mudflats emerging from an emptying reservoir.
The flooding has reached 80 settlements in Ukraine-controlled territory, Oleksandr Krasnolutskiy, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of environmental protection and natural resources, said at a media briefing yesterday. That’s only about 40% of the flooded zone, he noted; the remainder is now controlled by Russia. Evacuations from Ukrainian-controlled villages has been complicated by Russian shelling, Krasnolutskiy said.
Numerous ecosystems are likely to be altered by the disaster, the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group said in aThe draining of the reservoir has destroyed the spawning grounds of fish. As much as 2600 tons of 20 species have been commercially harvested in recent years. The receding waters also have exposed bird habitat on islands in the reservoir to predators, which could jeopardize the nests of yellow bittern and other rare species.
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