The cute fluffy steppe marmot has many fans around the world. In Ukraine the celebration of Groundhog Day began 20 years ago, when the journalists of the Kharkiv Press Club and the scientists from Karazin University woke up the groundhog in Kharkiv region for the first time. At the biological station the rodent determined the arrival of the spring and predicted the future harvest. Nowadays the Slobozhansky marmot Tymko III is the Slobozhanskii forecaster.
The co-founder of the holiday in Kharkiv Liudmyla Dolia recalls that in 2004 there were "blondes, brunettes, and redheads...". But Tymko III had a hard destiny to survive the Russian invasion. In 2022, it and its "tribesmen" in the Kupiansk region found themselves under occupation. The land was shaking from explosions, there was no electricity, and there were shortages of food supplies. They were hunted by packs of abandoned stray dogs. The animals couldn’t even sleep. As a result, all the marmots didn’t have any offspring. This is the opinion of university researcher Volodymyr Ronkin, who took care of the animals at that time. Due to the actions of the Russians the marmots are in mortal danger. Before the war their number in the Kharkiv region reached 5,000, and now most of the territories where they live are in the front line. Therefore, it is impossible to find out the exact number of animals in the wild. Over the past 30 years their population has decreased almost in 10 times! It is hard to say what will be left now and whether there will be anything left at all! As a result of active hostilities in the Kharkiv region, more than 170 thousand hectares of forests and more than 570 thousand hectares of agricultural land have been destroyed or damaged. Natural parks and landscapes have been devastated. Dmytro Shabanov, a professor at Vasyl Karazin University, emphasizes that everything the Russian regular army is doing to Ukrainian nature, bringing death to the environment, can be called ecocide. Biologists say that the Ukrainian steppe, which is a home to marmots and other representatives of the Red Book fauna and flora, has practically disappeared...
English version of the movie at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8leFr0iYyRY
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Supported by the Democracy Commission Small Grants Program of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.
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