In the early hours of June 6, 2023, two large explosions reverberated across cities and small towns located on the banks of the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine. The Russian military had reportedly set off multiple bombs, destroying the three-kilometer-long Kakhovka Dam and draining its massive reservoir into nearby settlements.

Water from the dam flooded the plains, killing hundreds of civilians and countless livestock, destroying farms, and displacing the residents of more than 37,000 homes.

The bombing made headlines around the world. However, it’s the long-term impact of the attack on the local biodiversity that has scientists and experts concerned. In the weeks following the explosion, researchers from Ukrainian ministries and independent organizations carried out several assessments as best they could to the backdrop of the war.

They found that the attack had flooded about 60,000 hectares (230 square miles) of forest in at least four national parks, threatening an estimated population of 20,000 animals and 10,000 birds.

“Almost all aquatic vegetation had died, and much of the marine life had disappeared, including mollusks,” says Serhiiy Skoryk, director of Kamianska Sich National Park in Kherson, one of the regions affected. “Those that survived moved downstream,” says the scientist-turned-freedom fighter.

The deluge also dislodged many landmines in the heavy conflict region, moving them downstream into farms and residential areas.

The researchers found an equally deadly if less obvious threat: Industrial pollutants previously captured in the reservoir’s sediments had contaminated the flood zones and the Black Sea.

Another report by the Ukrainian Scientific Center for Marine Ecology, published just months after the destruction of the dam, also showed high evidence of pollution in the Black Sea, including heavy metals such as copper, zinc, and arsenic compounds.

“All that water from the reservoir contains contaminant particles, along with carcasses of the animals that died during the flood, most of which ended in the sea, which is now polluted,” says Oleksiy Vasyliuk, an environmental scientist from Ukraine who has been documenting the ecological impact of the war.

One of the hardest hit groups of species was mussels, “filter feeders” who help purify water. With populations of these animals significantly reduced, Vasyliuk expresses worry that these pollutants could enter the human food chain.

The war has made an already bad situation for many species even worse. “Even before the war, the ecology of Ukraine was endangered, but the Russian invasion attacks have caused serious threats to Ukrainian biodiversity,” says Anastasia Drapaliuk, project coordinator at Tellus Conservation in Ukraine.

In a paper for the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, Drapaliuk and other experts noted that wildlife across 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles) faced catastrophic effects from the flood, including rare species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects. “Populations of some species were dealt a possibly greater blow in one day on June 6 than in the last 100 years,” they wrote.

But amidst the destruction, something unexpected has emerged.

Baby Forests

“Despite the challenges, our colleagues have been making regular expeditions to the affected area,” says Vasyliuk. “Three months after the attack they were shocked to find vegetation and forests in part of the reservoir that was left dry after the dam collapse.” They documented a young willow forest making its way through the dry cracked soil left behind by the floods. “It was unbelievable; no one expected to see the greenery they found, or that such a thing could happen amidst these tragic events,” he adds, the thrill of the discovering still evident in his voice.

Where they feared desertification, a thick forest of largely willow trees — Rumex aquaticus and Celtis occidentalis — some reaching as high as six meters, now occupies about 150,000 hectares (930 square miles) of land that had once been covered by the reservoir.

Vasyliuk hypothesizes that despite the absence of fertile soil, the forest flourished because of the organic mass left behind by the lost animals and plants, including dead species such as the mollusks.

“It is possible the organic particles from these mollusks and other materials fed and nourished the forests like fertilizers,” he says. “The entire mechanism [that led to the birth of a new forest] is yet to be studied, because what we found was a lot of cross-breaded seeds among indigenous trees.”

Still, it seems a cause for celebration. “It was very great,” he says, adding that the forest was the “only good thing to happened since the Russian attacks have damaged much of the local environment.”

Skoryk echoes that: “Nature was healing herself, and all we have to do is to not interfere and let her take charge. Like a phoenix, in the form of a new forest, was rising from this tragedy,” he says.

Drapaliuk looks at the growth from a longer perspective. The way she sees it, the nature in the region has been given a bit of a reset: It’s simply reviving its original biodiversity, “Before the Soviet Union, this was a historically significant region, not just for the Cossacks [indigenous Ukrainian tribes] but also for the biodiversity. It was the wetlands, a place for many rare birds and animals,” she explains.

Rebuild or Restore?

This new forest is a rare positive development in an otherwise tragic situation, considering an estimated 298,000 hectares (1,150 square miles) of forest fires — 50 times more than the annual average — have been reported across Ukraine since the start of the since 2022, according to the by the Kyiv School of Economics. The report, which took stock of Ukraine’s economic losses as of this past January, calculated forest damages “at more than 82.9 million cubic meters of timber with an estimated value of $4.5 billion.”

As a result, many Ukrainian environmentalists and scientists have appealed to the government to withhold any reconstruction of the dam.

“When the dam was first built [during the Soviet era], the damage to the regional ecology, culture and heritage were not taken into consideration,” says Vasyliuk. “As a result, so much of the natural and historical significant biodiversity was impacted, such as the Great Meadows,” referring to the historic steppe terrain of Ukraine that was submerged under the reservoir when the dam was built.

In the early 1950s the Soviet Union pushed for widespread industrialization. During this period, this region and many others were razed to make way for infrastructure such as the dam.

“The dam increased the salinity of the land, affecting soil quality, and that should be one of the reasons to not rebuild it,” Vasyliuk argues. “We need to plan strategically for the future and make decisions that are good for Ukrainian and not just because the dam was already there and someone gave us money to rebuild it.”

Toll on Scientific Study

Overall, though, scientific research in the region has been severely restricted since the Russian invasion.

“From what we can gather, about 30% of the previously protected areas, such as wetlands and Ramsay sites in Ukraine, are now active warzones or occupied territories,” says Drapaliuk, who presented findings on that damage last year in a webinar for the EUROPARC Foundation. The Dnipro delta, the mouth of the Dnieper River, is included in the Ramsar Convention’s list of protected areas of international importance.

According data published this past February by the Ukrainian Ministry of Environmental Protection, about 812 protected areas, spread over 1 million square kilometers, have been affected by different types of military operations since the beginning of the war.

“So much of the area has been mined (with explosive land mines) that it becomes dangerous to even study the region even after it is liberated,” Drapaliuk says, adding that lack of resources, financial and human, has considerably slowed down data collection.

“The damage by the war has put a lot of pressure on our work,” she adds. “For those working in the national parks, it is difficult to even access basic needs such as vehicles, fuel, electricity and equipment since much of it was destroyed during the Russian attacks.”

Then there’s the effect on people. “To care about a forest, you have to care about people who work for it,” Drapaliuk says. But persistent Russian bombing of the region has prevented any normalcy in the work and life of the locals. “A lot of people from this area, a lot of forest rangers, are now in the army, making it difficult to continue work on protection and conservation.”

Indeed, the war has blurred the lines of duty for those like Skoryk, who went from being an environmentalist to a combatant to a prisoner of war. Just days after the invasion began in February 2022, Skoryk was taken prisoner by Russian forces who had entered Ukraine. He eventually escaped when his captors “got drunk on too much vodka.” He went on to assist with the liberation of the national park.

Drapaliuk urges international environmental groups to invest in preserving Ukraine’s biodiversity. Much of the aid flowing into Ukraine today is for military support, and issues such as ecological destruction tends to take a backseat.

“Of course, we all understand the priority and urgency; our country needs military support,” she says. “But in my opinion, we also really need international help to protect the ecological sector.”

Skoryk calls attention to demining efforts in the region, a task to which he is personally devoting his time.

“Gradually, we are clearing the area of mine and explosives, but it is a vast land mass encompassing nearly 12,000 hectares, and complex undertaking,” he says.

Experts also emphasized the need to build policies and plans, not just for wartime but also to be implemented after victory.

“There is a lot we can’t do now [in terms of conservation] but we can prepare an action plan for territories under war or occupation. They can be established as new protected areas so that we are ready to save the biodiversity in those territories soon after liberation,” Drapaliuk says.

“We can’t afford to waste time,” she adds.

Previously in The Revelator:

War Threatens Ukraine’s Unique Red Seaweed Fields. Here’s How Scientists Monitor Them From Afar