About 180,000 birds, wild animals may die due to blowing up of Kakhovka HPP

Due to the explosion of the Kakhovka HPP by the Russians, 160,000 birds and more than 20,000 wild animals are under threat of death.

That's according to the press service of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, citing Minister Ruslan Strilets, Ukrinform reports.

According to him, high water is essentially just washing away all our biodiversity. Nine sites of the Emerald Network and five Ramsar sites with an area of more than 76 thousand hectares are under threat of extinction.

"It will be almost impossible to restore these ecosystems in their original form as created by nature. It will take decades. And no amount of money in the world will return our unique nature to us," the minister said.

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He also drew attention to the fact that land flooding will lead to soil degradation, erosion and wash away the entire fertile soil layer into the water, which in turn will not only destroy our fertile soils but also cause pollution of the Dnipro River water resources.

Another consequence of the disaster is losing Ukraine's most valuable resource - water.

"As of today, we have already lost a third of the water from the Kakhovka Reservoir, which was accumulated due to the spring floods," he said.

According to the head of the Ministry of Environment, the flood may lead to a deterioration in water quality, as tons of household waste, demolition waste, and everything that has accumulated over the years on the reservoir's shore will flow into the Dnipro River and from there into the Black Sea.

Read also: Flooded lands due to Kakhovka HPP’s destruction require full agro-ecological assessment - Agrarian Ministry

He also emphasized that by blowing up the Kakhovka HPP, the occupiers destroyed the possibility of supplying Dnipro water to Crimea because the level of the Kakhovka reservoir is so critical that the water simply will not get to the North Crimean Canal.

As reported, Ukraine has already lost 6.5 cubic kilometers of water due to the Russians' blowing up of the Kakhovka HPP dam. About 40 thousand cubic meters of water flows out of the Kakhovka reservoir every second.