Ukrainian Police Raid Danube Reserve Office

VILKOVO, Ukraine, November 4, 2004 (ENS) - The Danube Transport Prosecutors office raided the Danube Biosphere Reserve Office on Tuesday, to stem opposition to a navigation canal that the Ukraine is constructing across the core of the reserve, a Ramsar wetland of international importance.

At noon, five policemen led by Danube Transport Prosecutors office representative S. Kouznetsov arrived at the Danube Reserve Office. They showed a document charging Danube reserve staff with misuse of budget funds and abuse of power.

The raid is aimed at weakening the position of Dr. Alexander Volshkevich, an icthyologist who serves as the reserve director. He continues to defend his reserve from the impact of canal construction on the environmentally fragile Bystre Estuary.

The police did not arrest Volshkevich, but they loaded their car with all the documents in the office - not only accounting documents, but also all incoming and outcoming letters, agreements and other papers, observers said.

The prosecutor's office also has seized most of the reserve's computers, and may come back for the rest. With no bookkeeping documents, the reserve office cannot fuel boats and vehicles to patrol the reserve or pay salaries to the rangers.

Olga Zakharova, of the environmental group the Socio-Ecological Union International (SEUI), says that the Ukrainian authorities are only "pretending to listen to European Union demands for an environmental assessment of the canal. However, true situation is quite different - construction goes on."

Danube Reserve Director Alexander Volshkevich (right) with journalist Marina Tkachuk and two rangers from the reserve. (Photo courtesy SEUI)

The International Socio-Ecological Union and the Ukrainian Coalition for Wild Nature are condemning this "abuse of law," Zakharova says.

At more formal levels, the international community is expressing concern for the Danube Biosphere Reserve.

Construction started on May 11, and soon afterwards the U.S. State Department said the government is "deeply concerned about the potential substantial negative environmental impact" of a proposed shipping canal sponsored by the government of Ukraine on the Bystre Estuary, according to Deputy State Department Spokesman Adam Ereli.

In a May 17 statement, Ereli said the United States has urged Ukraine "to conduct the necessary impartial environmental impact assessment for the proposed canal and to select a route that will minimize the destructive impact on the environment, thus fulfilling its international commitments under the environmental agreements to which it is a party."

On May 10, WWF warned that construction of the Bystroye Canal would threaten critical habitats within the 400,000 hectare Danube Delta - one of Europe's most ecologically important areas - and jeopardize the region's fishing and tourism industries.

On May 7, the Ramsar Convention Secretariat expressed its concern to Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, about the canal construction.

Dredging at Jermakov Island in the Danube Biosphere Reserve (Photo courtesy )

On August 20, the European Commission expressed concern that the construction of the channel could cause "significant and irreparable harm to ecological system of the Danube."

On August 26, President Kuchma opened the first phase of the project, a channel from the Danube to the Black Sea, in an official event timed to coincide with the 13th anniversary of Ukrainian independence.

But construction continues, and last week, the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Bureau expressed ongoing concern about rezoning of the estuary to accomodate the canal.

In the time that has passed since the canal launch, Gyrlo Ukrainian officials have demonstrated the way they are going to deal with the problem around the Danube Delta - to eliminate the source of the conflict - the Danube Reserve itself, environmentalists warn.

Changes of the Danube reserve zoning have nothing to do with science, they have been done according to directions from the government. Valuable areas - Potapov and Starostambulsky estuaries' shores, Kubanu and Lebedinka islands - are to be moved from strictly protected to anthropogenic landscapes, according to a statement from the WWF Living Waters Program, the International Social-Ecological Union Odessa branch, and the Ukrainian Coalition for Wild Nature in October.

"This means an absolutely different regime of protection, allowing various activities, so these valuable areas are under threat now too," the environmental groups said. Kubanu Island is a breeding and nesting ground for 10 percent of Europe's population of the endangered rare Ferruginous duck, Aythya nyroca.

The Vilkovo Town Council, with the support of Ukrainian officials and businesses, are demanding in court the inner waters of the reserve - though these areas have never belonged to Vilkovo. If the court supports the demand and new zoning is accepted - nothing will remain of the Danube Reserve, the environmentalists warn.

Zakharova says the Ukrainian government has ignnored all public demands to preserve the Danube Delta and "has launched instead an international misinformation campaign to defend by any means the project which damages the reserve."

"The Ministry of Transport of Ukraine is disseminating cynically untruthful reports about the canal's construction, especially regarding public participation," she said today. "The lies start with the statement that they are merely restoring the deep-water navigation along the Bystre Gyrlo. The truth is it has never existed at the Bystre estuary."