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The war in Ukraine is causing heavy fallout for flora and fauna. The Ukrainian government estimates that the conflict has created at least $40 billion worth of environmental damage so far. Exotic animals, once illegally kept as pets, have been abandoned to fend for themselves as thousands of hectares of forest have been destroyed. FRANCE 24’s Andrew Hilliar, Elena Volochine and Abdelkader Dermas spoke with Ukrainian ecologists and animal welfare activists to bring us this report.
Natalia Popova is the director of the ‘UAnimals’ animal rescue centre in the suburbs of the capital Kyiv that has rescued more than 200 animals abandoned by their owners who fled the fighting.
Popova points out that these animals are more fortunate in a way than the wildlife in areas scarred by fighting: “When a missile lands, nothing is left alive. Animals in the surrounding area can suffer serious brain damage. There’s nothing much we can do to save them. They run away, hide and suffer an agonising death.”
Olena Krivoroutchkina, a Ukrainian MP and ecologist who is part of a working group analysing the environmental fallout of the war, points out that the monetary estimate of the conflict’s toll is based only on the territories liberated so far.
“That figure will rise after occupied territories have been liberated, when we get to see first-hand the damage there. … We can rapidly rebuild bridges and homes with international aid. But we can’t fix nature just as quickly,” she says.
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