As the world awaits evidence and further details on exactly what happened to the dam, there is no doubt about the ecological damage the breach will cause. About 600 square kilometers of the Kherson region is currently under water along the southern part of the Dnipro River, says Veremiychyk. And a huge amount of water has now drained above the dam, leaving behind a desert full of polluted dust, he adds.
a video shared online by President Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak shows what appear to be thousands of writhing fish stranded on dry land near the village of Maryanske, which lies north of the Kakhovka Reservoir. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture, 95,000 tons of fish could be lost. The Ukrainian Ministry of Health posted a warning on Facebook people advise not to eat any fish that has been carried downstream by the floodwaters. “There is a risk of botulism,” the post read, referring to a rare but serious condition caused by toxins released by different types of bacteria.
Homes, farms, wetlands, meadows and national parks lie in the path of the floodwaters. Many of the wildlife living in these habitats are likely to be wiped out, says Veremiychyk: “It will be great losses.”
NGOs and research groups in Ukraine have outlined the potential ecological impacts. In a long blog post, the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG) describes how dozens of fish species are likely to be affected. Birds that rely on the waterways and wetlands, including the beautiful Eurasian spoonbill, reptiles such as the Caspian whip snake, and vulnerable mammals such as the Nordmann mouse, are also listed as endangered. “These animals,” the authors of the blog post write, “have no means to survive in the turbulent current.”
Turnbull says nature-oriented groups in Ukraine are documents all the many ecological consequences of the war to gather hard evidence and establish the true extent of environmental destruction. We can expect reports on the consequences of the dam breaching in the months and years to come.
What is already clear is the enormous geographic scope of the disaster. Doug Weir, director of research and policy at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, has been digging into satellite images of flooded areas downstream from the dam. “There are some pretty big oil spills, or what looks like oil, in the Kherson region that seem to be coming from some of the industrial buildings there,” he says. “That’s a risk we anticipated.”
He says contaminants from septic tanks and wastewater treatment plants can also be washed over land. Kristina Hook, a Ukraine and Russia specialist at Kennesaw State University, agrees that pollutants are a serious threat. “You’re just looking at a very dangerous and dirty kind of water,” she says. And this all happens just after many animals have spawned in the spring, she adds. This part of the world, the Eurasian steppe, stretching from Hungary to eastern China, is characterized through grasslands, plateaus and, in many places, high levels of biodiversity.
