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However, Mr. Vasyliuk said the government could not safely move funds or supplies to reserves in the occupied territories, putting animals at risk of starvation. The conservation group said it was raising money for the reserves, including paying local grain farmers to feed the animals in Askania-Nova.
Mr. Vasyliuk said that some administrative offices of the occupied reservists were looted and many personnel were evacuated. He added that his organization is working to provide food, water and medicine to workers in the occupied areas and to help displaced workers find shelter, and that some members of his protection group have become refugees.
War also has opportunity costs, as resources and priorities shift from protection to human survival. “We tend to focus on the things that happen directly – big fires and plumes of smoke, damaged oil infrastructure,” said Mr. Weir. “But in fact, it tends to be the collapse of environmental governance that leads to thousands of such disruptions, and then frankly, it has that lasting legacy.”
Asylum and Restructuring
Despite all the damage that war can do, in isolated cases human conflict can provide a shield for nature.
The most famous example is Korea’s Demilitarized Zone, a thin strip of land that acts as a buffer between North and South Korea. It is completely closed to people, protected by guards, fences and landmines. But in the absence of humans, provides shelter for rare flora and fauna, including red-crowned and white-necked cranes, Asian black bears, and possibly Siberian tigers. (Mines can pose a hazard to larger land animals.)
In some cases, war can also disrupt mining sectors. During the Second World War, commercial fishing in the North Sea almost completely ceased due to the seizure of fishing boats, restriction of their movement, and fishermen’s preparations for war. Populations of many commercially harvested fish species rebound.
However, the gains may be temporary. During the early years of Nicaragua’s civil war, the forests of the country’s Atlantic coast regrowth as people leave their farms and flee. But as the war slowed down, the inhabitants returned and deforestation resumed; almost twice as much land was robbed Scientists have found that in this period, which was reforested during the early war.
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