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This week, a coalition of small island states is asking an international tribunal to rule on whether greenhouse gas pollution is covered under the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea .

The law governs marine territorial rights and navigation and requires states to prevent and control marine pollution.

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne is co-leading the coalition of nine Pacific and Caribbean islands.

“We’re here today because over a century and a half of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have polluted our precious oceans and devastated the marine environment,” he said before the court in Hamburg, Germany, this week.

Most of the excess heat created by greenhouse gas pollution goes into the world’s oceans, triggering marine heat waves, coral bleaching, migration of fish stocks and sea level rise — all of which poses an existential threat to the small island states, Browne said.

The coalition believes that the Law of the Sea should be interpreted by the court as requiring countries to slash emissions enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Without rapid and ambitious remedial action, climate change may prevent my children and my grandchildren from living on the island of the ancestors, the island that we call home,” Browne said.

The tribunal’s advisory opinion wouldn’t be legally binding. But David Freestone, a legal adviser for the island coalition, said it could pave the way for cases that would be.

“It does open the opportunity for cases to be brought by one state against another, to argue that they suffer specific damage as a result of the breach of the obligations of the Law of the Sea convention.”

It also could allow one country to file an injunction against another’s plan to build a new coal-fired power plant, for example, Freestone said.

Because “emissions from that coal-fired power station will actually have significant impacts on the oceans,” he said in an interview with The World.

The UN Law of the Sea Convention includes 169 parties. Although the US isn’t one of them, the tribunal’s ruling could inform decisions in national courts, according to Maria Antonia Tigre, senior climate litigation fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

But Tigre said that she thinks it’s unlikely that the tribunal would say exactly how much countries should be cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

“So, I don’t think it would be the final answer that would make it obvious that a country needs to reduce emission by a certain amount, but I do think it would be very persuasive as further litigation is then being brought.”

Around 40 countries are scheduled to speak at the tribunal hearing over two weeks.

So far, Saudi Arabia and Australia have argued that the Law of the Sea does not apply to greenhouse gases.

Australia’s solicitor-general Stephen Donaghue argued these gases differ from the kind of marine pollution that the law was written to address 40 years ago.

“Greenhouse gas emissions present a new and different type of challenge to these conventional cases.”

This is the third case of its kind brought before international courts this year, and the second spearheaded by small island nations.

They say they’re at the tribunal because they’re weary of decades of climate talks leading to insufficient progress.

The Vanuatu’s Attorney General Arnold Kiel Loughman spoke before the court.

“Time and time again, we have been disappointed by the absence of concrete action at the international level.”

“We can leave no words left unsaid, no stone unturned, and no road left untaken in the search for a solution to the climate crisis.”

Arguments will continue through Sept. 25, and a decision is expected by next spring.

The costs of the war in Ukraine can be measured first and foremost in human lives lost, in destroyed communities and infrastructure.

But environmental damages are also widespread and will continue to impact Ukrainians for decades to come.

In early June 2022, the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River burst, unleashing much of the water from a reservoir roughly the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Large swaths of the reservoir dried up, while towns and villages south of the dam were flooded. Floodwaters contaminated with sewage, oil and land mines swept away houses and forced evacuations.

This incident sparked global attention on the environmental impact of the war for the first time.

But damage to the environment has been ongoing since February 2022, when the full-scale invasion started.

In the video above, The World’s Carolyn Beeler explains how the war has impacted the environment in Ukraine.
Related: A coalition of Ukrainians is documenting environmental crimes
Old-school trench warfare along the front lines has torn up forests and triggered fires.

Industrial sites and oil depots have been bombed and destroyed, sending contamination into the soil and groundwater.

Damaged wastewater and sewage facilities have contaminated drinking water, while mines and unexploded ordinance have rendered agricultural land unusable.

Beeler also speaks about the effort by the Ukrainian government and local nongovernmental organizations to document the damage.
Related: Farmland off-limits in Ukraine due to mines

Christian Hossli stood above the Rhine River in Basel, Switzerland, at a hydropower facility called Birsfelden.

This is the first barrier that salmon will have to cross when they make their return in a few years.

People can bike across the dam, but fish have to take a different path.

The Birsfelden hydropower facility in Basel, Switzerland, doubles as a public walking path across the Rhine.

Credit:

Emily Haavik/The World

The Rhine River runs north through Central Europe, from Switzerland to the North Sea. A hundred years ago, it was filled with salmon. Then, their migration was blocked by man-made structures built on the river.

Now the nations along the Rhine are attempting to bring salmon back by installing fish ladders.

“A stairway, you could say,” Hossli said.

The fish ladder at Birsfelden is made up of several concrete pools that form a “stairway” for the fish.

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Emily Haavik/The World

The ladder at Birsfelden is made up of several concrete pools of water, each a few inches higher than the last, with a current flowing through.

"The Rhine on the left side is like, five to 10 meters lower … and this ladder helps the fish to overcome this barrier,” Hossli said.

Christian Hossli says this fish ladder at Birsfelden still needs to be updated in order for salmon to successfully pass through.

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Emily Haavik/The World

Hossli works for the World Wildlife Fund in Switzerland. His organization is part of the Salmon Comeback initiative, a group of nonprofits and nations working to reconnect the Rhine and restore an old migration route. According to Hossli, hundreds of thousands of salmon once swam up and down the river each year.

“This was the case until 1900 or so,” he said.

Christian Hossli works for the World Wildlife Fund in Switzerland.

Credit:

Emily Haavik/The World

The salmon would swim north with the current, from Basel all the way to the Netherlands and the North Sea. There they’d mature, then swim against the current back to Basel, to spawn. They did this until their route was blocked by hydropower facilities and other barriers.

“In the middle of the last century, salmon got extinct in the Rhine area,” Hossli said.

Salmon are an especially needy fish – meaning they require very particular conditions in their ecosystem. So the theory is, if salmon can thrive here, any fish can.

“If we bring back salmon to our rivers, if he feels well … we can be kind of sure that our river ecosystems are in good shape,” Hossli said.

The beautiful Aare River, a tributary of the Rhine, winds through Bern, the capital of Switzerland. “In Switzerland, most of the people think that our nature is in good shape,” said Christian Hossli. “But this is not true.”

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Emily Haavik/The World

The nations along the Rhine – Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – have agreed that the river should be reconnected by 2027. That’s a new goal, after a 2020 deadline came and went. A lot of work has been done, but there’s one sticking point: the Vogelgrun hydropower facility about 37 miles north of Basel.

“The Vogelgrun case is maybe the most difficult obstacle,” said Roberto Epple, president of the nonprofit European Rivers Network.

Epple said Vogelgrun is a tough spot because it’s where the old Rhine joins the Canal d'Alsace, a man-made channel running parallel to the Rhine.

A couple of solutions have been proposed to get the salmon through, like sending them under the dam — or over. Both ideas would cost between $86 to $108 million, Epple said.

Epple said another idea, to bring the salmon across in a boat, just isn’t feasible.

The French-owned power company EDF owns the facility at Vogelgrun. In 10 years, there’s been no agreement on a solution. Now, Epple and his colleagues have a new idea. They want to follow the flow of the water.

“Ninety percent of the water comes through the channel, and salmon are following the current,” Epple said.

Instead of using the old Rhine, Epple and others in the Salmon Comeback coalition think that fish ladders should be placed on the larger Alsace channel. They say that’s where most of the fish are likely to go, anyway.

“This proposal we have is cheaper and much more efficient,” Epple said.

When fish pass through this ladder, they can be lifted in the cage for research purposes.

Credit:

Emily Haavik/The World

Last fall, EDF started construction on two other fish ladders north of Vogelgrun, at Rhinau and Marckolsheim. EDF declined an interview request, but on their website, they said that the project is funded by France Relance, a COVID-19 recovery package from the government.

Now, Epple and Christian Hossli both believe it’s up to EDF to pay for Vogelgrun.

“The owner took quite a big profit out of this power plant during the last 100 years,” Hossli said. “So it would be kind of fair.”

In Basel, Hossli said the government is already reintroducing the Atlantic salmon that once lived in Swiss waters. But he said that work, and the work of the other Rhine nations, will be wasted if the fish can’t get through Vogelgrun.

“If you just connect two-thirds of the last remaining stretch, it would be kind of nonsense,” he said.

Hossli said he hopes all the different stakeholders can find a solution to connect the final piece of the Rhine and bring the salmon back home.

From Parisian pigeons to New York City rats, every city has its pesky wildlife creatures.

In London, it’s the city’s 10,000 urban foxes that have become both a malevolent menace and misunderstood mammal — it just depends on who you ask.

“One thing you can certainly say about the fox is it's an animal that's been persecuted its whole existence,” said professional wildlife photographer Matt Maran, co-author of the book "Fox: Neighbor. Villain. Icon ."

A fox stands outside Southwark Crown Court in London, Wednesday, July 26, 2023.

Credit:

Alberto Pezzali/AP

Maran said his fascination with London’s foxes stems at least in part because of the creature’s ability to adapt to its surroundings, even as other animals were phased out of the city.

“We used to have bears, wolves and lynx roaming these lands,” Maran said. “But somehow the fox has managed to survive all of that persecution.”

Wildlife photographer Matt Maran.

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Rebecca Rosman/The World

For many Londoners, there’s less of a fascination and more of an irritation, especially as urban foxes become bolder, increasingly making their way into gardens and raiding trash bins.

“I think most people consider them perhaps a nuisance,” London resident Sara Johnson said. She regularly sees foxes rummaging around the garden of her home located just next to Hyde Park.

“[London] is not a natural habitat for foxes,” according to Eivand Johnson, her husband. “There’s so much food in the city that’s thrown out that foxes can live off of these provisions that are left from restaurants and even private homes.”

To which Maran said — can we blame them?

“Why would you blame an animal for going to get easy pickings?” he said, “They're really great survivors.”

These are what you call human problems, Maran said, not fox problems.

Wildlife photographer Matt Maran looks out for foxes.

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Rebecca Rosman/The World

Maran points to other places where humans have found solutions to living with disruptive wildlife. For example, specially designed bear resistant trash cans used inside national parks in the US. Why doesn’t London have fox-proof bins, he said.

Wildlife photographer Matt Maran prepares to photograph a fox in his neighborhood community garden.

Credit:

Rebecca Rosman/The World

After all, foxes have been a staple of the city’s landscape for decades.

“The whole thing with foxes is they've been prevalent in London since the 1930s,” said Trevor Williams, founder of the Fox Project , a charity that operates a wildlife ambulance service that treats more than a thousand foxes a year.

But when Williams launched the organization in 1991, it was because he felt there were too many misconceptions going around about foxes.

“I've always felt there was a need for an organization, an information bureau really on foxes, and that's what I wanted to establish,” he said.

There are some points Williams wants to make straight: Foxes are generally not a threat to humans or domestic animals such as cats or dogs. They haven’t carried rabies in the UK since 1902. The fox population in London isn’t growing — it’s actually gone down since its peak in the mid-'90s.

And those wailing screeching sounds that they sometimes make at night? They can be annoying, but they’re generally just mating calls or a simple fox conversation.

“It's those kind of misconceptions which blow up and they get worse by urban myth,” Williams said.

“Everybody gets more and more frightened because we love being frightened in England.”

Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve is one of the country's top ecological destinations.

And there's a good reason for that. It has a lush green jungle, and it’s home to more than 2,000 species of plants and trees , 400 different types of birds and 120 amphibian and reptile species that thrive in a unique ecosystem that is nearly permanently in the clouds.

Or, at least, it used to be.

As temperatures in the area warm, the clouds are beginning to lift. On one particular day a couple of weeks ago, it was abnormally windy and mostly dry. Decades ago, there were only 25 days annually when it didn't rain. Now, there are more than a hundred dry days a year.

"For cloud forests, that's a lot of dry weather,” said Monteverde resident scientist Alan Pounds who has been at the reserve since the 1980s. "Plants and animals in the cloud forest are adapted for this constant input of mist and cloud; like all these little orchids that grow on branch tips have evolved to be bathed in this moisture most of the time and so they can be really affected by these kinds of events."

Fungai in Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve. It is home to more than 2,000 species of plants and trees.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

Already two species of local frogs have gone extinct: the golden toad and a local breed of the harlequin frog. And there are concerns that the extravagantly feathered Quetzal bird, whose native mating habitat is in the cloud forest, may now be in danger.

Alan Pounds is a residen scienists in Monteverde in Costa Rica and has been at the reserve since the 1980s.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

Pounds wrote one of the first papers on the impact of climate change in tropical forests in the late 1990s and said the future of the cloud forest itself is at risk.

"If we continue on the present trajectory, I think it's safe to say the cloud forest is going to disappear,” he said. "It’s already turning into something else. It’s turning into more of a seasonal rainforest."

Pounds said even if the reserve gets the total rainfall it did before, it’ll come in clumps, rather than dispersed evenly throughout the year. The transformation means a hit to the local ecosystem, with some species being pushed out or killed off, and different ones moving in as temperatures warm.

Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve. Decades ago, there were only 25 days annually when it didn't rain. Now, there are more than a hundred dry days a year.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

Sensitive species could face extinction
Monteverde is just one of many places in Costa Rica that are seeing an impact.

The privately run Tirimbina Biological Reserve is located about 100 miles east of Monteverde. Tirimbina boasts of having the longest suspension bridge in Costa Rica, nearly 1,000 feet across the rushing Sarapiquí River. And it’s based in a tropical rainforest, not a cloud forest like Monteverde. But climate change is taking a similar toll there.

The privately-run Tirimbina Biological Reserve boasts of having the longest suspension bridge in Costa Rica, nearly 1,000 feet across the rushing Sarapiquí River.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

“If you came here 25 years ago, you’d find that more than 300 days out of the year it was raining, raining, raining — constant rain,” Tirimbina biologist Sergio Villega said. "But not today. Daily rainfall has decreased dramatically."

Sergio Villega is a biologist at the privately-run Tirimbina Biological Reserve in Costa Rica.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

Villegas said there are studies that temperatures near the reserve have increased by almost half degree over the last 20 years.

“For a person, that might not seem like much, but for a little frog or a fish or a sensitive species, this could mean the difference between a decline in the population or not,” he explained. “Some species may move to higher regions. But others may have nowhere to go and they may be condemned to extinction or [become] highly endangered."

A poison dart frog in Costa Rica.

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Michael Fox/The World

Stemming the tide
Costa Rica, as a country, has been doing its best to stem the tide .

“Costa Rica has been one of the top Latin American countries on the forefront of the battle against global warming,” said Alonso Villalobos , a political scientist at the University of Costa Rica who specializes in climate and sustainability.

"Combating climate change has been state policy going back over four administrations — from the mid-2000s on,” he said.

Hummingbirds at Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

They've created national plans against global warming, pushed for carbon neutrality and transitioned to renewable energy.

"Previous governments have approved binding international commitments such as the Paris Agreement,” said Pascal Girot Pignot , the director of the geography school also at the University of Costa Rica.

“And public policies such as Carbon Neutrality, the Climate Change National Adaptation Policy and its National Adaptation Plan and the Decarbonization Plan,” he added. “These commitments are based on a long tradition in national and international environmental law in which Costa Rica has been a leader."

Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve is home to species that thrive in a unique ecosystem which is nearly permanently in the clouds.

Credit:

Michael Fox/The World

But it can’t be done alone. If other countries don’t also contribute, climate change will still affect Costa Rica.

"Climate change is not something that’s going to happen,” in the future, Tirimbina biologist Sergio Villegas said. "It already is happening and we're witnessing the consequences."

Related: Animal species are evolving to adjust to climate change, but scientists say time is running out

Six months after record-breaking earthquakes devastated southern Turkey and northern Syria, the historic city of Antakya is a rolling landscape of cracked high-rises, tent cities and piles of debris.

The freezing temperatures of the earthquake’s immediate aftermath have been replaced by dust and 95-degree-Fahrenheit days.

Despite the Turkish government’s promise to rebuild affected areas within a year, nearly everyone in the city continues to live in tents and converted shipping containers — set up in front of gardens, olive orchards and open fields.

Donated tents, designed for the winter cold, soak up the heat of the sun. But skin infections, borne by flies, are common. Organized settlements of container homes are set up on hot concrete, surrounded by barbed wire, and are reliant on regular shipments of drinking water.

Of the more than 50,000 deaths reported in Turkey, half occurred in Hatay , the country’s southernmost province. Grief pervades almost every corner of the province but, slowly, the residents who remain are carving out a life amid the rubble.

Here is a photo essay by The World's Durrie Bouscaren.

Translations by Duygu Yeral.

Some homes and buildings remain standing in central Antakya, Turkey, awaiting demolition.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


Mustafa Güler, a tinsmith in Antakya’s covered bazaar in Turkey, lost 57 members of his family in the earthquakes.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


A motorcyclist rides past a demolished building in the beach town of Samandağ. A converted shipping container serves as an insurance office.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


From their terrace, a family watches a building next door get torn down. Asbestos wasn’t banned in Turkey until 2010, and environmentalists fear the dust created by earthquake debris is toxic.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


A child walks through a tent camp in an olive orchard in Antakya, Turkey.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


A container camp in Antakya, Turkey.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


An informal tent camp set up in an olive orchard in Antakya. The Turkish government has prioritized its own citizens for container housing, and most residents of informal tent camps are Syrian refugees.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


Syrian children outside their tent in Antakya, Turkey. Many Syrian families who lost their homes in the earthquake are living in tents.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


A tent hospital set up on Samandağ beach, not far from a large dump site for earthquake debris.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


Many shops have reopened for business in converted shipping containers, like this liquor store.

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Durrie Bouscaren/The World


Semih and Serap Bozaydi reopened their tailoring shop in a market of small, prefabricated buildings set up by the government. The shopkeepers will be charged rent starting in October, and the Bozaydi’s aren’t sure they’ll stay. “It feels like a temporary life,” Semih said.

Credit:

Durrie Bouscaren/The World


Mişel Atik, director of the Samandağ Environmental Protection and Tourism Association, stands outside the ruins of the historic house that he had painstakingly restored. The morning of Feb. 6, Atik had randomly awoken just a few minutes before the earthquake, and escaped through a window just before his home collapsed.

Credit:

Durrie Bouscaren/The World


Environmentalists help hatching sea turtles reach the surface on Samandağ Beach, just a few meters from a large dump site for earthquake debris.

Credit:

Durrie Bouscaren/The World

Related: Life returns to Antakya, a city nearly leveled by earthquakes in southern Turkey

For centuries, shark fin has been considered a delicacy in Chinese cooking — a symbol of hospitality, status and good fortune. The fin itself doesn’t have much taste, but it provides a gelatinous texture to a popular soup served at fancy banquets and luxury restaurants in China, where people pay up to $200 for a single bowl.

But there is a huge problem with this soup: Tens of millions of sharks are killed every year to make it. Many come from South America, where the shark fin trade has expanded and flourished.

Peru is the world's largest exporter of shark fins, according to Oceana, an international organization devoted to ocean conservation. Around 95% of their shipments go to Hong Kong, where buying and eating shark fins is legal.

But most of these fins don’t come from Peruvian waters, explained Alicia Kuroíwa, a biologist and researcher with Oceana. “Around 75% of the sharks come from neighboring Ecuador, where there are far larger populations of sharks and fewer regulations,” she said.

César Ipenza, an environmental lawyer based in Peru, said there are criminal organizations that smuggle fins to Peru or hide them among frozen fish.

“Once there, there’s a system that allows for officials to issue illicit permits to ship them abroad,” Ipensa said.

Both Peru and Ecuador are grappling with corrupt officials, a lack of capacity and the large profits at play.

In Hong Kong, a pound of shark fins can cost up to $700, compared to $7 in Peru.

Selling shark fins in Hong Kong is legal, but people need a special permit to sell endangered species. People can face up to 10 years in prison for illegal trading, but prosecutions are rare.

Around the world, it’s not uncommon that shark hunters cut the fin off and throw the animal back into the sea. Unable to swim, they sink and die of blood loss or are eaten by other predators. This practice is known as finning, and it’s banned in many countries.

Finning doesn’t happen so much in Ecuador or Peru, Alicia Kuroíwa said, where sharks are caught and retained whole to satisfy a modest demand for shark meat.

But foreign ships may engage in finning and get away with it, according to Evan Ellis, a Latin American research professor with the US Army War College.

“You’ve seen Chinese-flagged vessels operating farther and farther off their coasts after they pretty much depleted fish stocks closer to [their] own shores,” Ellis said. "Their fishing fleets have had to go farther and farther away to find fishing stocks that have not been exhausted."

Recent investigations show that hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels are operating almost 24/7 off the coast of South America.

Last year, China accounted for about 80% of the fishing in the international waters off Ecuador, Peru and Argentina.

According to Ellis, it’s challenging for authorities there to catch illegal foreign ships. “Oftentimes, vessels also will change names and registries that make it difficult for them to do so. And you have other practices such as turning off the transponder systems.”

Without advanced techniques, proving that a specific vessel has been engaged in illegal fishing is difficult.

The lucrative trade of fins is threatening species of sharks in South American waters, according to María Cristina Cely, a marine veterinarian and an environmental activist in Ecuador.

“Industrial fishing is depleting the overall fish population in Ecuador, which forces many local fishermen to look for exotic and more lucrative species like sharks or to go fishing in protected areas like the Galapagos islands.”

Maria Cristina Cely, marine veterinarian and environmental activist in Ecuador
“Industrial fishing is depleting the overall fish population in Ecuador, which forces many local fishermen to look for exotic and more lucrative species like sharks or to go fishing in protected areas like the Galapagos islands,” Cely said.

The business is thriving across South America despite legislative efforts to stop it.

Last month, authorities in Panama seized its largest amount of illegal shark fins. And just a month earlier, Brazilian officials caught 29 tons — the world's largest-ever shipment of illegal shark fins. Authorities estimate that close to 10,000 sharks were killed for this single shipment.

Panama’s Congress is currently discussing a bill that plans to restore and protect shark populations off its waters, but the country has still not banned shark fishing and the export of shark fins.

In Ecuador, people have been able to catch sharks by categorizing it as “incidental catch,” or an unintentional catch while fishing other species, which remains legal in the country.

However, in February 2022, Peru convicted two shark traffickers to four and a half years in prison for carrying 1.8 tons of fins from six species of shark, which they were going to sell to a seafood company. It took four years for the case to be completed, and there have been no convictions since.

Ipenza called it a “major success for Peru,” as this was the first time this country had ever sentenced anyone for illegal shark fin trading.

Related: An important fishing village in Senegal is on the verge of disappearing as sea levels rise

Tetyana Samoylenko tried to save all the vegetables in her root cellar before the water started filling it last winter, but she couldn’t get them all.

Now, shriveled black potatoes float in about 3 feet of water that flowed to the village of Demydiv in the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion.

Samoylenko lives not far from a dam separating the Irpin River from the Kyiv Reservoir, which Ukrainian forces blew a hole through in February of 2022.

A view of the flooded area in Kozarovychi village in the Kyiv region of Ukraine on June 10, 2023.

Credit:

Anastasia Vlasova/The World

Thousands of acres of land about 25 miles north of central Kyiv were flooded. That water has been credited with preventing Russian troops from advancing toward Kyiv in their early push for the capital. The new wetland has become a largely welcome addition to the natural landscape, though the water remains an inconvenience for Samoylenko and others in her village whose homes were flooded.

The water reached Samoylenko’s floorboards at its highest. Her water pump was destroyed and her well was contaminated, so she can’t drink the water anymore.

“It’s too dirty,” she said. “All of the sewage system got flooded, too, and all the toilets. Everything was floating here.”

A view of a flooded household in Demydiv village in the Kyiv region of Ukraine on June 10, 2023.

Credit:

Anastasia Vlasova/The World

Now, her sister and brother-in-law, who live in a part of the village that still has clean drinking water, drop off several, 5-liter bottles of drinking water each day.

It’s been like this for well over a year, but Samoylenko is still glad the dam was damaged.

“I’m not mad,” she said. “Had this not happened, Russians would have reached Kyiv.”

That’s largely the public sentiment here, where some people have started calling the Irpin a “Hero River.” The dam hasn’t been repaired; the 7,000 acres remain flooded.

On a warm June afternoon, people sat relaxing on the dam, biking across its span, or hiking along the water line. Swans floated by on the water.

Volodymyr Nechyporenko, who lives in a nearby town, fished in the shallow water.

“It was the right decision to [burst the dam],” he said through an interpreter, “because if they hadn’t blown it, the Russians would be in Kyiv.”

He fishes here about once a week, sometimes frying up the bigger catch to eat, and he wants the wetlands to stay as they are.

Roman Lysenko, a biologist with the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, said conservationists in Ukraine mostly say the same thing.

The biologist, Roman Lysenko, photographed by the flooded area in Kozarovychi village in the Kyiv region of Ukraine on June 10, 2023.

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Anastasia Vlasova/The World

“It's quite like what it used to look like in the spring, maybe a hundred years ago,” he said.

Lysenko said the dam was built in the 1960s, and that dried out a natural floodplain. Now, the Irpin River is running closer to its natural course again.

“Now, almost everything that remains under the water is natural floodplains,” he said.

On a visit to the new wetland in June, Lysenko surveyed the pioneer species establishing themselves in the new ecosystem, noting plant species growing near the waterline and a gray heron that flew low over the water.

Credit:

Anastasia Vlasova/The World

“It’s a good sign. I think we will see that biodiversity will bloom here,” he said.

The flooded wetland is a nursery for fish and a good habitat for plants that need fluctuating amounts of water, he said, but for birds, “it’s like heaven.”

This is not how conservationists would have restored this ecosystem had they planned it. Fertilizer and sewage was likely swept into the water when the dam was damaged, Lyzenko said, and homes were flooded.

But now, the area is closer to its natural state than it has been in decades, Lysenko said: “Maybe it’s optimal. It’s optimal for nature, and it’s still optimal for the defense of our country.”

The Ukrainian military has told residents this new wetland will stay here until at least the end of the war.