Today, many countries celebrate World Rivers Day. Rivers are very important to people because they provide us with many important things: food, clean water, building materials, transportation corridors, opportunities for recreation and tourism, and much more. But not only people gravitate to rivers and water bodies. Rivers and especially wetlands are home, kitchen or bedroom for many plants and animals of our planet. More than 40% of species are associated with these natural systems in one way or another. Let’s figure out what the term “biodiversity” means, which you can hear quite often from ecologists, and how we are related to it.

Today, February 9, WWF-Ukraine and Rewilding Ukraine are launching the information campaign to draw the attention of Ukrainians to the value of rivers and wetlands, which are complex natural systems providing people with many ecosystem services. The environmental organizations emphasize the need to preserve and restore the rivers and floodplains of Ukraine.