Once common in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the kulan (Equus hemionus kulan) has been on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species since 1994, and its population is now classified as extinct and “highly fragmented”. The 20 kulans released into the steppe in late December 2021 were the second such reintroduction (the first occurred in May 2020) as part of wildlife restoration efforts in the Danube Delta region of Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. Here, a constellation of organizations supported by Rewilding Europe is working to restore a landscape damaged by industrialization and overhunting.
The team of Ukrainian conservationists Rewilding Ukraine worked with partners of another reserve on the reintroduction of kulans. A second herd of Kulans joins the 20 donkeys released in 2020, marking the first step towards a herd of 300 in the next 12 years.
Saiga, fallow deer and kulan once roamed the Tarutyn steppe, forming and creating habitats. Similar herbivores graze on grass and other vegetation, reducing the risk of forest fires; Shorter grasses also benefit smaller creatures such as marmots and gophers. The return of kulans and other animals is good news both for predators, primarily wolves, and for the Danube Delta region in general. It is one of the least populated areas of Europe with a temperate climate, occupying 5,800 square kilometers of the territory of Romania, Moldova and Ukraine, and its area is almost equal to the size of the state of Delaware.
The delta is the terminus of one of Europe’s largest rivers. Beginning in the mountains of the German Black Forest, the Danube flows through the capitals of Vienna, Budapest, and Belgrade, and then bisects the Carpathians in Romania. From here it turns to the East, forming a border with Bulgaria. The river then bends and flows parallel to the Black Sea before disintegrating into a large network of creeks, lakes, reedbeds and mud flats, eventually emptying into the sea.
In the 20th century, canals and dams cut off the lakes in the delta, but more than 4,600 species of animals and plants still live in its emerald web. The Danube Delta is a favorable habitat for European mink, at least two species of wild sturgeon, as well as a large number of migratory birds and a population of rare curled pelicans.
Mykhailo Nesterenko has devoted 25 years to efforts to restore wildlife in the Danube Delta. Since he helped found Rewilding Ukraine in 2017, he has worked with team members to reintroduce key animal species such as kulan, water buffalo, horses, fallow deer and owls. In addition to building wooden pelican nesting platforms, the team also repaired some of the Soviet-era damage to the landscape, using excavators and other equipment to remove dams and reconnect the river and floodplain with one of the largest lake systems on the Ukrainian side of the delta.
All this work gradually helped to strengthen the foundations of the local population’s use of nature: infrastructure for bird and animal observation for tourists, an eco-park with excursion routes through the Tarutyn Steppe.
But on February 24, 2022, the future of the revitalization initiative – and the future of the delta itself and the entire country – was called into question: the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine.
Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea, located about 150 kilometers northeast of the Danube Delta, was attacked on the first day of the war. Russian fighter jets roared overhead, followed by shelling from land and sea. The shelling forced thousands of residents, including Nesterenko, his family and Rewilding Ukraine liaison Kateryna Kurakina, to evacuate. After moving to Moldova and then Romania, they were transferred to the Netherlands, where the main organization of Rewilding Europe is located.
Although the Danube Delta was far from the front line, the team was still concerned about the area.
“There were statements by Russian high-ranking officials that they would strike all the coastal areas of the Black Sea,” Nesterenko notes.
Even if the delta had not come under direct Russian occupation, the future looked uncertain and fraught with danger. The booming ecotourism industry, which Nesterenko believes is essential to the success of their wildlife restoration initiative, has come to a sudden halt. Although exact figures for Ukraine are difficult to find, the number of tourists visiting the Romanian part of the delta dropped by a quarter in the first five months of 2022.
Sea mines have been laid in the Black Sea by both Ukrainian and Russian forces, part of an ongoing naval war that has included a battle for control of Ukraine’s Snake Island, located about 35 kilometers from the delta. Several mines were swept by the tides into the mouth of the delta, where they exploded in a wildlife restoration area, sparking fires in dry woodlands. In the summer of 2022, a hydrographic vessel was hit by a sea mine in the Ukrainian part of the delta, and in September 2023, a cargo ship on the Romanian side was blown up by a sea mine. Fortunately, the crews of both ships survived.
Due to Russia’s announced plans on the Black Sea coast, the delta area closest to the sea became a military exclusion zone and has remained so. This proved particularly problematic for the Danube Biosphere Reserve (DBR), a protected area created by Ukraine, located between the sea and the border with Romania. DBR is one of the key local partners of Rewilding Ukraine; both organizations worked together on a number of projects. One of these was a collaboration in 2021 to create floating platforms for curled pelicans and this continues a project started by Rewilding Europe and other partners in 2019.
According to Maksym Yakovlev, deputy director of science at the SBI, neither his team nor Rewilding Ukraine investigated the consequences of the bloody battles that occurred during the operation to liberate Snake Island. Nor did they return to monitor pelican nesting sites or other projects. The area is too dangerous.
“Nature protection is the key to a peaceful life,” says Bohdan Prots, general director of the Danube-Carpathian Program and head of the biodiversity department of the State Museum of Natural History in Lviv, western Ukraine.
As the war affected most of the country, the restoration of nature in many areas became impossible.
War creates a different kind of wildlife outside of the wildlife restoration area. In Ukraine, approximately 174,000 square kilometers — 30% of the country’s territory, an area roughly the size of Washington State — are currently contaminated with explosive devices. While they were once detectable with metal detectors, Prots says most landmines in Ukraine are mostly made of camouflaged plastic that can blend in with grasslands and forests.
While he hopes drones will revolutionize mine detection, it is unclear whether they will ever be able to detect mines in Ukraine’s densely vegetated forests and wetlands.
Fortunately, almost two years after the start of the war, the Danube Delta did not turn into a deadly minefield. Sea mines and drone strikes are still a threat, but Rewilding Ukraine conservationists continue to restore areas of the delta that they can access without much risk.
The war led to the displacement of millions of Ukrainians. 6 million refugees ran across the borders to Poland, Moldova, Hungary and other countries of the world. Poland alone accepted 60% of these international refugees. Another 5 million displaced Ukrainians moved to relatively peaceful areas of Ukraine. Many people settled in the cities of the Danube delta and the Tarutyn steppe. In other regions of the country, for example, in the Carpathians, IDPs have themselves moved to nature reserves, living in repurposed dormitories for field research, visitor centers and museums.
Although the war has been a disaster for ecotourism in the region, Ukrainians continue to benefit psychologically from nature, and the ecosystems also receive some help. Recently, Rewilding Ukraine, together with its Romanian and Moldovan colleagues, announced the creation of the Danube Delta Rewilding Club, which aims to connect children with nature. Prots and Nesterenko point out that people voluntarily participate in environmental protection measures that are ongoing in Ukraine, from the Carpathians to the Tarutyn Steppe.
However, it remains to be seen whether voluntary recovery efforts can offset the devastating effects of war on ecosystems. Prots notes that in the Danube Delta region and across Ukraine, the reality of less money and less law enforcement on the ground could lead to an increase in illegal fishing and hunting as people struggle to survive.
One thing can be said for sure: ecological qualities that make some regions of Ukraine so important for biodiversity – rivers, peatlands, river mouths and forests
