Ecological disaster unfolding in the Russian countryside

Thousands of wild animals fall victim to banned agricultural pesticides. A side effect of Moscow's war on Ukraine. The complaint of hunters and fishermen in south-west Russia. Only the authorities in Stavropol admitted the problem and intervened.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Due to the increasingly difficult conditions of the economy and daily life in southern Russia, close to the war zones with Ukraine, farmers have started to use prohibited techniques for cultivation, causing a veritable massacre of animals, and a vast ecological ruin of the territories.

The carcasses of foxes, hares, ducks, seagulls, owls and even storks have been lying everywhere for more than two months now, with desolate images spread on social networks from the phones of hunters and fishermen.

Aleksandr, a hunter from the Rostov region, told reporters from Novaja Gazeta that he had taken out a special licence for hare hunting last year, and had to return it because of the extermination: 'We only collect corpses of beautiful little animals in pools of blood.

A new, unknown pandemic was thought to have occurred, and those in charge of the sector began to carry out tests, to clarify that it was chemical, and not infection.

The systematic use of dangerous products, after all, proved to be a different kind of epidemic. Since the beginning of November, laboratories of the control centre Rosselkhoznadzor, specialised in agricultural surveillance, have been collecting dead wild animals from the Rostov, Krasnodar and Orel areas.

Another hunter from the Ipatovo province in the Stavropol region says that 'as soon as we went out into the field, we came across six fox corpses; next to them were partridges lying on the ground, and a huge amount of dead rats, while all around us we noticed a strange red grain', fertilised with chemicals to which the animals are intolerant.

"We had seen similar scenes before, but never in such large and extensive quantities over the territory... the jackals, foxes and birds of prey pounce on the poisoned mice, thinking them easy prey, and for all the end is atrocious."

People began to speak in whispers of a 'tragedy of the wild' when in the Stavropol province of Petrovsk, hunters found a flock of several hundred rare grey gulls, all lying lifeless as they headed to overwinter in Israel, a usual route through the fields and river basins of southern Russia. Here they usually gather to rest and regain their strength, to fly further, but this time only a few made it. Most hunkered down on the banks of Lake Solenyj, near the village of Donskaya Balka.

The head of the ecological movement Native Russian, Arsenij Filippov, explains that the mass slaughter of these animals, including pheasants, wolves, and rare birds such as the tadorna ferruginea and others, is nothing new in these parts, due to incorrect use of pesticides spread on fields against rodents.

Last autumn, local farmers spread these practices beyond measure, pouring tons of poisons onto the fields with catastrophic consequences: 'Animals of tens of thousands of different species have died'.

Only the Stavropol authorities partly admitted to the problem, setting up an investigation committee that reported on the deaths of '800 gulls, four hares and a partridge'. A 'poison containing phosphorous-organic elements' was found in their bodies, which led to their death, launching an accusation of illegal practices against yet-to-be-identified culprits.

Among the population, and also in the local media, the issue is provoking increasingly indignant reactions, denouncing the 'disappearance of the North Caucasian pheasant' from almost all surrounding regions of southern Russia.

A group of dead black crows swooped down in front of the Kuban governor's residence in the central Krasnaja Street in the city of Krasnodar. The deaths of the local fauna have been compared to the effects of the bombings that take place only a few kilometres from these areas: war exterminates not only humans, but also animals.