Thousands of Dolphins Dead, the Black Sea Polluted. How Does War Damage the Environment?
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How does war damage the environment?
The answer is myriad and terrifying.
From the Client and Environment Observatory:
The environmental impact of wars begins long before they do. Building and sustaining military forces consumes vast quantities of resources. These might be common metals or rare earth elements, water or hydrocarbons. Maintaining military readiness means training, and training consumes resources. Military vehicles, aircraft, vessels, buildings and infrastructure all require energy, and more often than not that energy is oil, and energy efficiency is low. The CO2 emissions of the largest militaries are greater than many of the world’s countries combined.
Militaries also need large areas of land and sea, whether for bases and facilities, or for testing and training. Military lands are believed to cover between 1-6% of the global land surface. In many cases these are ecologically important areas. While excluding public development from these areas can benefit biodiversity, the question of whether they could be better managed as civil protected areas is rarely discussed. Military training creates emissions, disruption to landscapes and terrestrial and marine habitats, and creates chemical and noise pollution from the use of weapons, aircraft and vehicles.
Berdiansk, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine
Scientists who study the Black Sea warn that dolphins are being killed in the Russia-Ukraine war. Scientists are reporting many dolphin deaths, with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine blamed for the spike.
Dolphins are washing up on the coastline of the Black Sea (which borders Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Romania, and Moldova), showing war-related injuries, including burn marks from bombs.
Ivan Rusev, research director at Ukraine’s Tuzla Estuaries National Nature Park, has been documenting the 101 days of the war on his Facebook page, using his platform to raise awareness of the ecological effects of the invasion.
The ecologist states that the data collected by him and his team and other researchers around Europe show that “several thousand dolphins have already died.”
“Barbarians kill not only civilized people but smart dolphins,” Rusev
One Ukrainian ecologist has said that “several thousands of dolphins have already died.”
The Turkish Marine Research Foundation has said the war is causing a “crisis in biodiversity.”
Also raising the alarm on the mounting dolphin death toll is the Turkish Marine Research Foundation, which reported that the war is having “devastating effects” on the marine environment.
In a press release, the research foundation outlined the “crisis in biodiversity” caused by the war. It included the destruction of endangered red algae (which acts as a “living ground” for many marine species) and feeding grounds for fish — including dolphins — transformed into a maritime war zone.
It also highlighted the danger of oil and gas leaking into the sea from sunken military ships.
Before the war, 100 scientists from a Conservation group for the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and contiguous Atlantic Sea surveyed marine life to determine the number of dolphins within these areas.
Their study found that over 253,000 healthy dolphins lived in the Black Sea, the New York Times reports, with this being a sign of a well-functioning ecological system.
With the war raging on and tampering efforts for data collection, it is unknown precisely how many of these quarter of a million dolphins will survive.
