In no case. I am against unilateral accusations and the exchange of them. I worry about the peaceful citizens of Donbass and Ukraine and hope for a speedy return of peace.
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Another list for Ukrainian researchers and students:
https://scienceforukraine.eu/
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Here is another article with possible charities for donations to help people in the region. It is behind a paywall though. If you want the list but cannot access it, let me know.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/27/how-to-help-ukraine/
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Instead of endless arguing, post flagging, virtuous repetition of support, and Americans lecturing Ukrainians/Russians about their countries (a guarantee during any conflict worldwide), a thread highlighting the most interesting observations and species within Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian iNatters, would be a more fitting option in my opinion. There are a million other places online for people to fight with strangers about politics - no need for fellow naturalists to devolve into such on here.
Ukraine and Crimea have a great number of endemic species – Lindholm’s Rock Lizard, Crimean Red Deer, Kerch Wheatgrass, Donetsk Rose, Crimean Bright Bush-Cricket, a cave-dwelling rove beetle from Tyachiv in the west, Crimean Snow-in-Summer, and a lichen (Involucropyrenium breussii) from the chalky steppes near Kharkiv to name a few.
There are a number of interesting introductions in the country left over from the USSR. In Odessa, Bogdanov’s Thin-toed Gecko, a species with a narrow range in the deserts of Uzbekistan, incredibly persists in the urban centre of the city, restricted to concrete as there’s no suitable rocks around otherwise. Siberian Red Squirrels (ssp. exalbidus) were introduced to Crimea in the 1940s for fur production - the population continues to thrive today. edit: Dahl’s Lizards, from the southern Caucasus, are introduced to Zhytomyr.
The Ukrainian Government’s Red Book of Ukraine is the main website summarizing materials on the current state of rare and endangered species of animals and plants, on the basis of which scientific and practical measures aimed at their protection, reproduction and rational use are developed. English speakers can browse the site by installing a webpage translator such as the Google Translate Chrome extension.
War is bad. Anyone who wants to donate or support Ukraine knows where to find such off-site. I think it’s best for iNat to leave it at that and get back to focusing on the natural world.
edit: grammar, additional links
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I see the discussion opened last month on this topic has now closed. Perhaps this can be added, please? It is from the British Trust for Ornithology’s latest newsletter.
Supporting our colleagues in Ukraine
We have been working with Ukrainian colleagues in Polesia since 2019. We are appalled by the violent invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops and stand in full support of our Ukrainian friends.Our project partner Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) has been working to get partners and staff in Ukraine to safety, though most remain on site, helping where they can. They are working to ensure the twenty protected areas they care for can cope with the influx of people fleeing their homes. They are providing refugees with sleeping bags, heaters and torches, as well as supporting the protected areas’ running costs at a time when other funding has been cut off. We hope that the global support of Ukraine will allow the conflict to end swiftly, and that we will be able to continue to work with our colleagues to learn about and protect the country’s precious habitats and wildlife.
Visit the ZFS fundraising appeal to make a donation: (https://bto-enews.org/IG4-7RWGO-39H9UQ-4QHH4Q-1/c.aspx).
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Just following up here. As we mentioned above, the iNaturalist Forum is primarily for discussing topics directly related to iNaturalist - functionality, bugs, features, and community issues. The #nature-talk topic is a bit more open but should hew pretty closely to nature-related topics (see the About page). The original post was OK, but the topic turned into broader debates and recriminations about the conflict and about politics in general, which is not what the forum is for. It was becoming too difficult and time consuming to moderate and thus we decided to permanently close it. The above post is the last one I’ll add to this thread.
There are many places on the internet to share your political views and debate them with others. We want to keep this forum pretty tightly focused on civil, constructive discussions about iNaturalist and nature.
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