When the Ukrainian father of four, Volodymyr Horon, volunteered for military duty at the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, he was prepared. An avid hiker, backpacker, survivalist, and guide, he packed up a ton of his own gear: sleeping bags to share, flashlights, and even a compact shower. He was much better equipped than the other fighters in his unit, and passed on his knowledge, like showing them how to cook on a small camp stove in the field.
But once his unit began moving through the forests of Ukraine, land he’d hiked through for the last 25 years, the similarities to his prior life ended.
“There’s a different logic of actions here,” Horon explained. “For example, in backpacking, all your equipment is bright, so that you can be seen, so that you are not confused by hunters, or rescuers can find you. In the Army, everything is the opposite.”
Instead of picking the most direct routes, with easy trails to navigate, the soldiers purposely chose circuitous routes, often without trails.
“You no longer sit down for a snack where it is more beautiful, but where it is safest. You used to sit on your hill, eat a snack and look at the beauty around you. And in the war, you sit in a circle with your backs to each other, watch the perimeter, and eat. You don't communicate because everything should be done in silence.”
As the conflict wore on, Horon soon had a bitter realization: The natural areas that he’d dedicated his life to exploring and showing to others were beginning to display the scars of war. Trenches cut through the forests, land mines blew up trees and animals, and fires from bombings wiped out acres of land. With tens of thousands of soldiers moving through areas quickly, single-use items became popular, waste built up, and nobody was concerned with packing out their trash.
“One interesting fact: It was easier to find the Russian positions by the waste scattered around,” Horon said. “Our fighters tried to dig a hole and throw a bunch of plastic, bags, and so on into it every few days. Because this is your own land and you treat it differently.” It may not be Leave No Trace, but Ukrainians like Horon refused to completely forsake the lands they love, even in the face of unimaginable conflict.
As the war in Ukraine wages on well into its second year with no end in sight, it is unsurprisingly devastating the country’s environment. But at the same time, backpackers, conservationists, and activists are working hard to stem some of that damage and to bring outdoor recreation back to Ukraine.
Horon in the trenches in the liberated Sumy Region in May 2022. | Courtesy Volodymyr Horon
WHEN THE WAR BEGAN, Horon was about 20 years into running a successful campground and guiding company called TURE. With two campgrounds in southwest Ukraine—one in the Carpathian Mountains and another on the Dniester River—TURE offered overnight hiking, trekking, mountaineering, kayaking, and raft camping trips. They even organized fully autonomous six- to 10-day winter expeditions with dog sleds carrying clients’ gear, tents, and stoves.
But when the Russians invaded on February 24, 2022, Horon’s life changed almost immediately. The campgrounds, which include both tent campsites and lodges and are on the opposite side of the country from the front lines, became safe zones for TURE employees who lived closer to the fighting in Kyiv and eastern Ukraine.
“And a bunch of acquaintances and just tourists came. It was a kind of commune for the survival of displaced persons, temporarily resettled persons,” Horon remembered. “Many used our bases for transit. Going somewhere further, someone stopped for several days, recovered, and moved on. I think in total up to 500 people passed through our [two] camps.”
But soon, Horon and 10 of his 30 permanent employees volunteered for army service to defend their nation and headed out.
While on tours, Horon was itching to get out into the forest and clear his head, even though he wasn’t supposed to, for safety reasons.
“I couldn't help but run through the forest,” he said. “I dressed in civilian clothes and ran. I was considering the possibility that I might meet some enemy reconnaissance group. But I thought that if I run, I will be able to escape or I will pretend that I am a local and do exercises. Although, there weren't many runners in that village, so it would have been hard to pretend.”
But those moments of joy were few and far between. Horon was part of a combat unit that ran dangerous intelligence missions and he saw the horrors of war firsthand.
He worried about fighters for whom this was their first experience of camping and backpacking, that they may never want to return to the forest after the war.
“They may associate going into the forest with war. I don't have that.”
A couple walks through the Kinburn Spit in September 2017. | Petro Zadorozhnyy
BEFORE THE RUSSIAN INVASION, Ukraine was known for having rich biodiversity: the Carpathian Mountains in the southwest, verdant forests across the country, blonde grain fields waving under blue skies (the basis for its now-ubiquitous blue and yellow flag), and a gorgeous seaside in the southeast.
Ukrainian families are mourning the losses of their sons and daughters fighting for their freedom in the army, their civilian neighbors and friends murdered by Russian terror campaigns, and now the irreversible damage to their country itself.
“I have to understand that probably in the next 10 or 20 years I will hardly be able to travel those routes, show them to my children, or show them to friends who have not been there yet. I think about it all the time,” said Petro Tiestov, a conservationist at the Ukrainian environmental NGO, the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, and former adviser to the Minister of Environmental Protection of Ukraine.
“And even then, I won't be able to show the places I'm used to, not because they are mined or dangerous, but because they will disappear. What I was going there for, and what I felt when I was in those places, will no longer be there.”
Tiestov is part of the group of civilian conservationists at UNCG evaluating the extent of the damage. One of the group's biggest concerns is the land mines that have been laid across the country. Ihor Klymenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, told the national security publication, The Cipher Brief, that at least 30% of the country contains landmines.
Some of those mines were laid by the Ukrainian armed forces to prevent Russian advancement, especially along border areas. Tiestov says those mines will be easier to remove post-war because the army created painstaking maps detailing exactly where each is located. But mines laid by the Ukrainian army during the heat of conflict on the frontlines will be harder to find and de-mine later, “because maps of the mine fields theoretically exist, but someone died, someone did not hand them over, or the map was burned somewhere. So no one knows exactly where they are.”
Then there are the mines laid by Russian soldiers. These mines are often in areas of intense combat, so both planted landmines and unexploded ammunition will remain.
Many demining procedures, while necessary to reopen areas to backpacking and hiking, can also cause intense environmental damage. When a mine can’t be manually disabled (requiring a lot of time, manpower, and risk), one strategy is to set a controlled burn in a given area of forest, which detonates any buried mines. Then, workers can clear the debris and the forest can start fresh.
“But this is not okay from an environmental point of view,” Tiestov said. Ukraine already has a history of forest fires, most recently in 2020 when devastating fires burned in the Luhansk region.
Wild animals are also impacted by the mines, often exploding munitions and killing themselves and others in the process.
“My friends found a roe deer in the forest near Irpin, which got blown up on a mine booby trap or something else. It was torn to pieces already. Animals really suffer from this,” said Tiestov. Villagers in the Kyiv area report hearing two to three explosions a day in the forest, which are likely animal detonations.
While some of these mines were laid by Ukrainian soldiers, Tiestov said it’s clear who deserves the blame: “It is important to understand that, regardless of who directly laid the mines or shelled certain territories, Russia is solely to blame for everything. If there is no war, there would be no need for mines.”
People float down a flooded street in Kherson City in June 2023. | Oleksandyr Klymenko
AFTER 11 MONTHS in the army, in December 2022, Horon was ready to get home to his four kids, now ages 18, 15, 12, and 9. He was able to return to his campgrounds, which were still hosting some refugees, and make sure his business didn’t completely go under during the war.
But on June 6, 2023 at 2:30 am, Russian forces blew up the Khakova Dam, which held back the enormous Kakhovka Reservoir. Almost immediately, thousands of tons of water crashed downstream, overflowing the river’s banks and flooding thousands of acres of land, creating a humanitarian and environmental disaster. According to the Ukrainian government, dozens of people were killed in the floods. Others needed immediate rescue from the roofs of their homes.
On the other side of the country, Horon watched what was happening and thought back to all his rafting trips.
“Immediately you understand that you have to help somehow, because [you have] good water skills,” he wrote in a Facebook post detailing the trip later. He leapt into action putting together a team he trusted, including some of his TURE rafting employees, and borrowed rafts and boats.
“Borrowing” a specialized, durable boat for this particular mission required more faith than normal from its owners. “The owner understood when he gives [sic], that the boat may not return,” Horon wrote. “Meanwhile at the campground, the guys are gathering much needed gear. What exactly to take for such [missions] is not clear, because there is no such experience. So we take in water, mountaineering, camp, medical, and military gear.”
Horon and his crew drove through Kyiv and toward Kherson, the town with the worst of the flooding. Once they got on the water, it was go time. They rescued both people and pets, and delivered badlyneeded supplies to those who decided to stick around. Locals would shout “Slava Ukraini!” or “Glory to Ukraine!” as they passed. Some even made the rescuers coffee if their homes were safe enough to do so.
Once the rescue missions were completed, focus shifted to the devastating impacts of the flood on the environment.
“The consequences of the terrorist act...are catastrophic for nature and people. The scale of destruction of wildlife, natural ecosystems, and entire national parks is incomparably greater than the consequences for the wilderness of all military operations since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022,” said the UNCG in a statement.
As water rushed through the exploded dam, it covered whole islands, drowning the entire non-aquatic animal population, and tearing up vegetation from grasses to trees.
For backpackers, one of the hardest losses to stomach is the flooding of the Kinburn Spit, an idyllic strip of white sand beaches along the bright blue water of the Black Sea and Yahorlyk Bay. The spit was known for incredible camping with spectacular sunsets, and its lakes with pink pelicans that attracted tourists from around the world. The flooding temporarily turned the spit into an inaccessible island, which has cut off the surviving animals and vegetation from the larger ecosystem.
During the worst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Horon went on a voyage through the Black Sea, including the Kinburn Spit.
“In 2020 I saw it untouched, wild, and beautiful,” he remembered. “All these areas now are in severe ecological disaster.”
The waters should recede enough to reconnect the Kinburn Spit to the mainland, but experts say it will never be the same. There are long-term concerns about the impact of this type of extreme flooding, not just on Kinburn, but across the region. For example, environmental experts worry about the effects of flood waters tearing up the topmost layer of soil.
“In the south of Ukraine, invasive plant species are the first to settle in areas where the soil is disturbed,” Tiestov explained, which means these species could become widespread in the flooded areas.
While the intense flooding below the dam has received most of the media attention, there are also horrible impacts on areas above the dam, including in the reservoir where water levels have receded so heavily that entire areas are now barren. One of the largest bird refuges was on the islands of Velyki Kuchuhury, in the Velykyi Luh Natural Park, which made it a popular stop for kayak and canoe campers. The islands offered the birds natural protection from predators on the mainland. But after the waters receded, those colonies were no longer isolated, giving predators full access across. The bird populations are already decreasing, and will likely decrease further.
Similarly, the Kamianska Sich National Nature Park is now suffering from a drought, as previously watery areas are turning to desert. The popular backpacking and hiking destination had already survived a devastating eight-month-long Russian occupation and numerous associated fires, but it was liberated by Ukrainian troops in November 2022. Now, the newly-created desert areas are contributing to rising temperatures in the whole region, which will also increase the risk of further droughts, extreme weather, and climate change.
It’s a revolving door of horrors, one begetting the next.
Mariia Zadorozhna sits near her tent near Vuhatyi Kamin. | Petro Zadorozhnyy
WHILE POLICYMAKERS ARE debating the most ethical way to demine the country’s land while minimizing environmental impacts, many every-day Ukrainians are taking matters into their own hands, literally.
It’s technically possible to de-mine without special equipment. Earlier this year, farmer Oleksandr Havriluk described to CNN his process for demining 12 acres of his own fields with a consumer metal detector more commonly used by beachcombers.
“You go, you find it, take a stick, tap it to determine the size, and then you dig it up,” he said. “And then you pick it up gently and take it out.”
But obviously this work is extremely dangerous. According to the UN, over 200 civilians have already been killed by leftover mines, including multiple farmers doing work that’s more appropriately done by well-trained experts in unexploded ordnance wearing full explosive protection gear.
But Ukrainian experts can’t do this work alone, especially at the scale required, let alone while still fighting the Russian offensive. So international volunteers have pitched in. Some come from big, multinational organizations, like the Halo Trust, the world’s largest landmine removal organization, based in the U.K. But given the scale of the problem, other individual volunteers are also putting their lives on the line to demine Ukraine.
American Ryan Hendrickson is a retired Green Beret who started a landmine removal organization called Tip of the Spear. The issue is personal to him: On one of his eight deployments to Afghanistan, Hendrickson stepped on an IED that almost killed him. He survived, recovered, and then dedicated his life to landmine education, removal, and safety.
When the war in Ukraine started, Hendrickson saw civilians like Havriluk trying to clear their own land, many of them facing injuries and death in the process.
“And then that's when I decided, let me help out the best that I can,” Hendrickson said. He quit his job, traveled to Ukraine, and has split his time between the US and Ukraine ever since.
Mariia Zadorozhna hikes up Pip-Ivan. | Petro Zadorozhnyy
“It's my way of giving back. It's my way of helping. I've definitely done a lot of fighting in my life, lost my fair share of friends, including almost dying myself. And this is just my way of fulfilling that purpose to help other people.”
Hendrickson has worked specifically in national parks and other natural recreation areas across the country. Given that forests provide helpful cover for soldiers and are often where units are sleeping or living, these areas end up being some of the most heavily mined.
“So what ends up happening is the government has to take this entire national park or this entire outdoor recreational area and they have to close the whole thing off because you don't actually know where these mines are,” Hendrickson said.
In his experience, hiking and backpacking trails are often especially heavily mined, since soldiers on both sides often use them for easier movement when not on stealth missions, like Horon’s.
“And that's the reason why these trails in these parks, or national forests, or wildlife preserves...are so dangerous, because they're the path of least resistance in an area that is covered by vegetation.”
Hendrickson uses mine detectors to sweep an area and find the mines, and then a remote device to detonate them.
“I can uncover enough of it to know that it's a mine, and then I hook up some equipment to it, whether it's a hook line or a loop line or anything. I can remove myself back a hundred meters and pull it out from a distance.”
He not only removes the mines himself, but he also trains scores of local civilians and territorial defense to use the equipment, which he donates with the help of funding from around the world. The training is a force multiplier for his work, one that he says he’s especially successful at because the Ukrainian civilians can see that he is willing to put himself out in the field, in relative danger, as well.
Other than sophisticated equipment, however, Hendrickson says there’s another way to tell if a forest is mined: There are no animals.
“It’s creepy,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Wow, even the animals know to stay away from here. This area’s got to be mined. It must be bad.’”
Horon camping on Smotrych in the Chornohora Range. | Taras Gipp
TODAY, VOLODOMYR HORON spends most of his time running TURE’s campgrounds and expeditions, which have resumed business even while the war wages on.
The Carpathians are essentially the farthest possible distance from the fighting while still being inside Ukraine, and tourists who know the area feel comfortable with visiting once again.
“Surprisingly, now foreigners are coming a little. They began to appear this year,” he said. “Plus, it's a feeling of participation in historical events. Then you can tell your grandchildren that you were in Ukraine during the war.”
Looking toward the future, Horon still feels extremely confident that Ukraine will win the war. But victory would come a lot faster, he says, if the international community provided more weapons. It’s a common refrain here, one Petro Tiestov echoes.
“The more weapons are given and the faster they are given, the more we will be able to free the territory, clear mines, and restore nature, and we will be able to return to backpacking.”
