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In June 2023, Mykhailo Mulenko walked along the banks of the Dnipro River, watching as the rapidly receding water exposed the river’s riparian zones, condemning vast numbers of fish, mollusks, and aquatic plants to death under the sun’s heat.
An explosion had collapsed the Russian-occupied Kakhovka Dam, 180kms downstream, on 6 June. Within days, the river’s depth in Zaporizhzhia had dropped by around four meters, where 40-year-old Mulenko works as the Head of Nature Protection at the Khortytsia National Reserve.
“This territory is one of the most important points on the transnational bird migration route,” he explained at the time.
“When birds fly from north to south, they stop exactly at these territories; here at Khortytsia, and downstream in the Kakhovka reservoir, there are valuable wetlands where they could nest, fatten their young and fly on. Now this area is completely lost as an object of the emerald network of Kakhovka Reservoir.”
The destruction of the dam, almost universally attributed to occupying Russian forces, destroyed the hydroelectric plant and released 18 million cubic meters worth of water onto 80 unsuspecting villages and towns downstream.
The 2,155 square kilometre reservoir drained, killing at least 59 people and an unknown amount of wildlife in the largest environmental catastrophe of the war so far. The Ukrainian Government quickly deemed it an act of Russian ecocide.
Dead fish that were unable to escape into deeper water rotted on the banks of the Dnipro and attached inlets, putting severe stress on delicate ecosystems, some of which are protected as a part of the European Council’s Emerald Network.
Now, more than a year since the initial disaster, researchers and biologists like Mulenko have been able to better assess the extent of the ecological consequences. Despite the initial toll on humans and the environment remaining extreme, some encouraging signs have been observed in the river ecology of the former Kakhovka Reservoir.
As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues to devastate the environment, these developments are inspiring a cautious optimism that, in some cases, nature will be able to overcome the brutal damages of the war.
“At the beginning, we saw bare shores and dried-up lakes, and we didn’t know how this area would develop in the future. Whether it would turn into a desert or become overgrown with weeds—no one could imagine what would actually happen,” Mulenko explained during a recent visit to Zaporizhzhia.
“Now, we see that this area is actively recovering, not just through the development of vegetation. Wildlife is also returning to this area in large numbers: deer, wild boars, and a significant number of waterfowl and shorebirds.”
The Kakhovka Reservoir was formed after the construction of the dam and hydroelectric plant of the same name between 1950 and 1956 as the last in a series of six hydroelectric dams built by the Soviet Union along the Dnipro River.
Used to generate electricity, provide drinking and agricultural water, supply the cooling ponds for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, as well as important canals such as the Northern Crimean Canal, the massive reservoir was not without its faults.
Loss of local biodiversity, a declining fish population, and large amounts of pollution from agricultural and industrial runoff also characterised the reservoir. Various indigenous species of fish were blocked by the dam from migrating upstream to spawn, a problem common to hydroelectric dams globally.
Additionally, the prevalence of industrial and agricultural pollution in the reservoir initially sparked concerns that the bed of the former reservoir could dry up into a desert, creating the opportunity for sandstorms to spread toxic sediments throughout the region.
Though, of all the problems that remain — a lack of drinking and agricultural water for the region’s communities being primary — this fortunately is not one. Rather than become a desert, the formerly submerged areas have become green with grasses, willow, and poplar trees. The speed of regeneration has exceeded many local expectations.
“While this was, of course, an ecological disaster, it was more of a problem for people than for nature,” explained Tetyana Yarmokhina, a 57-year-old university lecturer, lawyer, and hydrogeologist from Zaporizhzhia who is also one of the city’s leading eco-activists.
“At this time, the poplar trees bloom and release seeds, and now there’s a willow forest. Willow is a resilient plant with strong wood and in just one year, the forest has grown two-three meters tall. The ecologists say that nature has done its homework,” she explained.
“In the area where they thought a catastrophe would occur, there’s now a regenerating forest, and historically, this area was called the ‘Great Meadow’ by the Cossacks.”
A semi-nomadic people who flourished in the region during the 15th and 16th centuries, the Cossacks were originally composed of those who fled serfdom and the feudal relations that dominated the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy at the time.
They were known for their semi-democratic society and military skills, a legacy that is often symbolically adapted to the contemporary existential struggle against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
As major Cossack settlements were located in areas that are now present-day Zaporizhzhia and Khortytsia Island, one unexpected consequence of the dramatic drop in river depth has been the surfacing of Cossack and other archaeological artifacts.
In June of last year, a Cossack-era canoe was discovered in the newly exposed river bank of Khortytsia Island, while in August of this year, the partial skeletal remains of an Ice Age-era mammoth were discovered for the first time in the region.
As significant as these archaeological finds are, perhaps the most encouraging development has been the return of wildlife to the region after so much loss, specifically species of fish that had long since disappeared from the reservoir and are now appearing in the river again.
“We’ve observed that fish species, such as sturgeons and shads, which used to inhabit the Dnipro River before the creation of the Kakhovka Reservoir, are returning to the riverbed that was exposed after the reservoir and dam were destroyed,” explained Mulenko.
“This is very, very good because the fish population in the reservoir was extremely small. Now there is much more diversity, as the river has retained its natural course. It is self-purifying, and it is developing as a living river, not as a cascade of reservoirs, but as a living river.”
The purifying quality of a river returning to its natural state has been a particularly positive development when considering that industrial pollution continues to plague the Dnipro as it flows through Zaporizhzhia city and infamous heavy industry.
Within the city, the river’s banks have been extended by dozens, if not hundreds of meters, resulting in less water available to dilute the pollution that ends up in the water. Signs posted along the city beach warn swimmers not to enter the water, though this does not stop people from fishing along the exposed banks.
“As you can see, the situation is quite bad. The water has dropped and there is something, perhaps gasoline, in the river. You can see it and smell it,” explained a 36-year-old local fisherman named Sergei. “Lately the fish are too small to keep, but we do eat the larger ones, and as you can see, I don’t have any horns on my head yet,” he joked as water with an oily sheen lapped against the rocky bank.
Though pollution remains a primary challenge to the health of the ecosystem, for the first time in more than 70 years the river is flowing in its natural state between the Zaporizhzhia’s Soviet-era hydroelectric dam and the Black Sea. The birds that Mulenko feared would be gone in the immediate aftermath of the disaster are returning, and in some cases, rare species typically not seen are making a comeback.
“We now more frequently observe bird species, particularly rare ones, that choose this area during migration now that the reservoir is gone,” explained Mulenko.
“Some species of shelducks; the ruddy shelduck, and a red duck. These are species more typical of northern countries, but during migration, they used to nest in this area and when the reservoir was created, they moved to the lower Dnipro, below the dam, but now they are returning to Khortytsia, to the area that is actively being restored.”
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These positive consequences can seem paradoxical when considering the pain inflicted on local communities and the environment in the immediate wake of the June attack. With the true death toll still unknown — much of the affected areas remain under Russian occupation—and another example of potential ecocide currently unfolding in the Seym and Desna rivers up north in the Chernihiv region, the potential for nature to recover often remains the one hopeful aspect of an otherwise very bleak situation.
“I’m a believer, and when even one person dies—and many have died—it’s, well, it’s very terrible,” lamented Yarmokhina.
“But as strange as it may seem, when we all were alarmed about the reservoir and no one knew what to do — of course, no one would have done it by blowing it up — but it happened as it did, and from nature’s perspective, to remove the dam was the ‘right decision.’”