A mourning day for Ukrainian biological diversity

The General Assembly announced May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity, Ukraine has joined this initiative, too, but in its own special way. This year the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine has prepared to the International Day of Biological Diversity better than ever in all years of Ukraine’s independence: on May 20 this year the government liquidated in all oblasts the departments of ecology and natural resource which preserved the material about the nature-reserve fund. Thus nobody is responsible for these riches. It is envisaged that the employees of ecology units of the Ministry of Nature will be transferred under jurisdiction of local administrations, therefore their number all over the country was reduced by 30 percent (according to the data of the Ministry of Nature, this is 968 people on the whole).

The public considers that liquidation of territorial bodies of nature-protection will lead to legalized seizure of reserve territories and lower control over keeping to the law in this branch. The ecologists are raising the alarm already today: according to the cadastre map of Ukraine, which has been made available for public this year, a large part of reserve territories of Ukraine has been given either for housing development or economic activity. According to Serhii Shaparenko, head of Kharkiv-based ecology group “Pechenihy,” in the past 10 years on the territory of Yalta Reserve 400 hectares of land has been taken for housing development. In Kyiv oblast the situation is no better: out of 194 natural reserves of Kyiv region in 28 the lands are being actively given out to private persons.

According to experts, the Ukrainian government showed good results concerning preserving of natural wealth in the end of 2009. During the independence years the area of nature-reserve fund of Ukraine has grown almost two times. As of November 2009, it included over 7,200 territories and objects with a total area of 2.8 million hectares which made 4 percent of the territory of the state. In the end of 2009 President Viktor Yushchenko created several more wildlife sanctuary by his decrees. So the area of nature-reserve fund made almost 7 percent. Europe recommends Ukraine to increase the area of reserve territories to 12 percent. Taking into account the fact that there are few large territories left, lots of small sanctuaries should be created, much more than now (about 10,000-15,000 throughout Ukraine).

COMMENTARY

Oleksii VASYLIUK, deputy head of the National Ecology Center of Ukraine:

“Since Monday Ukraine does not have any oblast departments of the Ministry of Nature, the only body that had archives of nature-reserve fund, was aware of their location and worked with them. It was liquidated within administrative reform. Today we have no idea where all these materials are now and whether they have been preserved. And we are speaking about 7,200 objects. If the data is lost, this will be a disaster. Today those who are interested in the questions of nature-reserve fund do not have the place where they could address these questions. If so, there is nobody to permit or nor not the allocation of plots for housing development. So, now it can be done anywhere. There is a clear instruction of the Cabinet of Ministers to liquidate the territorial natural protection bodies before May 17. It also says that special subdivisions will be created in local administrations. But no concrete date is mentioned when they must be created. Therefore all the objects of nature-reserve fund are now in danger. Of course, the objects located closer to Kyiv are in a greater danger. At the same time the administrative reform that envisage the liquidation of territorial bodies of ministers is being realized only in the Ministry of Nature. No other ministry has liquidated its territorial bodies. The government has already liquidated the territorial bodies of the State Reserve Service, so we think it is a systematic attack on reserve management. Unfortunately, no national park or reserve has been created in Ukraine since the beginning of 2010. Moreover, the only national park in Luhansk oblast – Sivero-Donetsk Park – was closed. At the moment eight decrees on creation of new wildlife sanctuaries and natural reserves are waiting to be signed at the Presidential Administration, in particular the Bilychansky forest in Kyiv, whose project has been developed following a presidential decree. None of them has been submitted for signature.”