In Ukraine, in the waters of the Black Sea, they want to create a marine reserve with an area of 3,000 square kilometers in order to restore the dolphin population to at least the level of the pre-war period.
It will take 30-50 years, Ivan Rusev, an ecologist and biologist of the Tuzlivski Lymany National Nature Park, told EcoPolitic, stressing that such an initiative was supported by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources.
He explained that national park scientists developed a scientific rationale for creating a large marine reserve for cetaceans after the war. This is necessary in order to have at least some chance of preserving the cetaceans of the Black Sea and giving the dolphins the opportunity to reproduce.
Rusev said that, for example, bottlenose dolphins give birth to one baby every two or three years. And in conditions of stress or contusion, the period of birth of offspring is generally postponed.
The biologist noted that, probably, such a reserve will be created thanks to the expansion of the Tuzlivski Lymaniy NPP, which covers part of the sea. It is planned that the water area will be very large – to Zmiiny Island, where dolphins will feel safe.
He emphasized that even before the full-scale war, there were a lot of poachers and fishermen near the national park, because of which "people of the sea" died en masse.
"So we hope that before the end of the war, the president [of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi] will sign the Decree I mentioned and we will be able to protect the dolphins in this way so that they can reproduce their population," said Rusev.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the scientists of the national nature park Tuzlivski Lymany in Odesa region calculated that during the full-scale war in the Black Sea, at least 5,000 dolphins died.
As Ecopolitika previously reported, the Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Oleksandr Krasnolutskyi said that armed aggression of the Russian Federation could destroy the Black Sea ecosystem.
