Rare steppe plant communities in Ukraine: Status, threats and their minimization

Abstract

Nowadays, the impact of anthropogenic activities on natural vegetation is constantly increasing, the level of threats is raised, and newer risk factors are emerging. Recent trends in the anthropogenic impact on plant communities are extremely pronounced, especially on those listed in the Green Book of Ukraine (GBU). Identifying such trends is required for the further development of strategic and tactical planning for the preservation and restoration of rare grass, shrub, and subshrub steppe, petrophyte and psammophyte plant communities of the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Ukraine. In addition to well-established threat factors that cause changes in the habitat of plant communities or mechanically affect plants, new specific threats occur. Today, the most important among them in Ukraine are as follows: climate change, military activity, growing population in the industrial cities, population poverty and government corruption, changes in forms of land ownership and the creation of a land market, lack of knowledge and effective policy, including lack of popular scientific information about the status of specific species and plant groupings, inadequate management of protected areas, uncoordinated environmental protection measures, ineffective sanctions, insufficient monitoring of the consumption of natural biological resources. The preservation of rare grass, shrubby and subshrubby communities in the steppe zone of Ukraine should be provided with proper support at the state level. There is a pressing need for a law of Ukraine “On the preservation of the steppes in Ukraine” and this will require mechanisms for its implementation. The issue of developing a strategy for the conservation and balanced use of steppe ecosystems in Ukraine, whose area is one of the largest in Europe, has long been raised. The main goal of the strategy is the actual preservation of steppe communities (most of which are currently rare) ensuring their restoration, minimizing degradation, and stopping biodiversity loss. In order to develop specific actions to eliminate threats or reduce their impact on rare plant groupings, it is required to investigate the causes of threats and assess their level and duration. This is required to preserve the landscape and biotic diversity in the steppe zone of Ukraine.