River meadows, moors, forests: From the air, the Polesie lowlands on both sides of the border between Ukraine and Belarus are at times amazingly reminiscent of the Amazon region.

On the ground, rare species such as greater spotted eagles, ruffs, lapwings and black-tailed godwits show that there is a great biodiversity in this area.

At the end of February, Russian troops advanced through this natural paradise towards the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Nature also suffers from the use of military vehicles, even in the distant Carpathian Mountains, which are also largely in Ukraine - and are considered hotspots for otherwise rare species such as mink, lynx, wolves and bears.

"When I found out about the attack by Russian troops on Ukraine, I was completely shocked," remembers Michael Brombacher.

The ecologist heads the Europe department of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), which oversees conservation projects not only in the savannahs of Africa and in the Amazon region, but also in Europe.

Brombacher is pushing ahead with his biggest projects in the Carpathians and in Polesia in the Ukraine.

Both areas are affected by the fighting, both directly and indirectly: in the region around the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Russian troops advanced through Polesie on Kyiv, they attacked in the north-east, east and south, and there were air raids almost everywhere in the country.

Several million people fled, 60,000 people reached the settlements of the protected areas in the Ukrainian part of the Carpathians.

Many of these internally displaced persons were able to stay in administration buildings and other facilities.

The conservation work had been stopped anyway on the first day of the attack.

Only the people there lacked almost everything.

For this reason, the FZS and its Romanian partner organization Fundația Conservation Carpathia (FCC) organized an aid transport in the first few days, which brought 3.5 tons of urgently needed material to the people seeking protection: sleeping bags, mattresses, food.

"We also bought beds from craftsmen in the Ukraine," says Brombacher.

Refugee aid instead of nature conservation.

Nature protection has a relatively high priority in Ukraine

However, nature conservation should also continue.

Trees were measured again in the Carpathians at the end of April.

The values ​​can be used to calculate how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide the forests will store in their wood over the long term, thereby slowing down climate change.

In this respect, the Carpathians are important, covering ten million hectares of forest, an area the size of Iceland.

It is home to the largest population of bears, wolves and lynx in Europe.

Mountain forest is quite well protected in Ukraine.

"There, at least up to now, impacts in the slowly growing forests at altitudes over 1000 meters have been prohibited," says Brombacher.

In any case, nature conservation has a relatively high priority in the country.

Hardly any president has so far failed to set up another national park in Ukraine.

The last of these parks to date was founded in January 2022 in Polesie.

These projects were supported by the German federal government, and in the Ukraine FZS implemented the projects together with local partners.

Rangers were trained in the Carpathians, vehicles with low fuel consumption were purchased for patrols and camera traps were set up to determine the population of lynxes living in Polesie, for example.