Ukrainian ecologists should be greeted with the victory — for two years they have demanded that the country would protect wolves on the legislative level. Recently the President of Ukraine signed the Law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on the Sectors of Hunting and Fishing, the Protection, Use and Reproduction of the Animal World,” which imposes restrictions on the ways in which these animals can be hunted. Now hunters have the right to do so only from October until February. As ecologists assure, by passing this law, Ukraine joined other European countries that developed wolf protection legislative acts a long time ago.
However, in Europe wolves are endangered species, while in Ukraine the situation is the exact opposite: in recent decades the quantity of wolves stabilized and in some regions it even increased. So, does Ukraine really need a law that repeats the European experience? Representatives of the Kyiv Ecological Cultural Center, which became an initiator of the draft law, say that now the quantity of wolves decreased to 1,000. That is why they should be protected, even entered in the Red Book of Ukraine, and the fines for killing predators should be introduced. But the Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is convinced that there is no necessity to protect wolves yet.
“Now wolves inhabit almost the entire territory of Ukraine, even though 20 years ago they were absent in five regions. So, in recent years in our area the number of wolves has increased up to 3,000, because earlier they were deliberately destroyed, and now people stopped doing that. During hunting they are killed very rarely, I can say, accidentally, because a wolf is a very smart animal. For example, while hunting, I saw a wolf only once in my entire life,” says Yurii Semenov, a senior researcher at the institute.
“I think it is neither necessary to take them under protection nor destroy. When at one point I went to northern Ukraine several times, I saw that in the Polisky Preserve wolves made clear paths. In the Chornobyl zone there are a lot of them, too. They do not need special protection; animals will breed if they have food. But like every kind of animal, wolves play an important role in maintaining the ecological balance in nature. They destroy the sick and weak animals. So it seems it is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, we cannot permit the extinction of animals, but on the other, their populations will increase. All of you know what damage is sometimes caused by wolves to the agricultural sector.”
According to Semenov, our problem is that in the past decade nobody seriously explored the problem of wolves. A complete disappearance of predators from the territory of Ukraine is highly unlikely. According to the scholar, this species is very flexible and environmentally enduring. Take into account at least the fact that they can cover the distance from 50 to 100 kilometers in one day. However, ecologists and scientists agree on one thing: a special program should be developed in order to take care of them and regulate their number. This issue was first raised seven years ago but is still far from conclusion. Perhaps the debate about the new law will get things started.
