Dead dolphins: how nature became another casualty of the Ukraine war

Tuzly Lagoons national park on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, where thousands of herons, avocets and pelicans breed. Russian bombing has scared off much wildlife. Photograph: K Tkach/Alamy

Every spring for the past 30 years, conservationists at the Tuzly Lagoons national park on the Black Sea in Ukraine have been digging shallow channels from the coastal lagoons down to the shoreline, linking the bodies of water together.

The rivulets, which used to occur naturally until industrial agriculture plugged the small rivers that fed them, are a busy through-route for billions of small fish, which winter in the sea then return to the lagoons to breed.