'Mother Nature recovers amazingly fast': reviving Ukraine's rich wetlands

In the Danube delta, removing dams and bringing back native species have restored ecosystems

A battered old military truck and rusting Belarusian tractor are perched on the edge of degraded wetland in the heart of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. They have been hastily deployed in a desperate attempt to save an excavator from being swallowed by the squelching earth beside the obsolete Soviet dam it is trying to demolish.

In the 1970s, 11 earth dams were built on the Sarata and Kogilnik rivers as a crude alternative to footbridges to access the area's aquifers.