“We are extraordinarily lucky, because one has to submit hundreds of applications to have even one of them be heard and supported!” Thus Oleh Derkach, deputy director of the Ecology Institute Northern department in Mykolayiv and winner of the Henry Ford European Contest to Protect the Environment, concluded his speech on the Reconstruction of Biological Variety of Rivers and Wetlands of the Black Sea Coast project. The project was awarded a $5,000 premium, and its author will compete for the contest’s main prize ($30,000) in the European finals on January 16, 2001, in Budapest.
According to Mr. Derkach, Europe’s largest river and wetlands area on Ukraine’s coast play, the role of an ecological corridor through which millions of European birds migrate, and also is a spawning ground for valuable fish species. However, due to ecological ignorance, the unique territories are degrading. To revive it, ecologists cleared a 320 meter long strait, thus uniting the Kingburn internal lakes and the Dnipro estuary into an integrated system. And a miracle occurred: several hundred tons of fish came there for spawning, pink pelicans settled in the shallows, and nearby islands became inhabited by other rare birds and animals registered in the Ukrainian Red Book. At the Kingburn spit shoals artificial islands were also constructed for waterfowl. Incidentally, some of the local inhabitants showed an original reaction on the feathered world: they said the birds will eat all the fish. Of equal importance are the other two ecological projects marked with encouragement prizes of $1,000 each. One of them, the Kyiv Palace for Children and Young People project, is aimed at the preservation and revival of an anemone area in Kyiv oblast’s forest and parks zone. Interestingly, this ephemeral plant blossoms once in seven years, and its delicate flower lives for only five hours. A second project, by Mykola Kyseliov of Sevastopol, is devoted to bacterial-chemical utilization and biological destruction of organic and inorganic wastes. Among such wastes also extremely dangerous is old ammunition, which is left in the Crimean coastal region in large amounts. According to Kyseliov’s technology, the explosives are decomposed “with no problems “ by some groups of bacteria and organisms. The future belongs to the biotechnology, the project’s author is convinced. It is a pity that the state does not have the money for solving the problems at which the ecology projects are aimed. Meanwhile, 130 Ukrainian projects were presented at the contest, and its organizers claim that 70% of them is worth to be executed. Where are you, our domestic do-gooders?
