Tropical plants are being destroyed in the Grishko Botanical Garden in Kyiv due to a power outage

Constant power outages and heating in Kyiv have led to losses among tropical plants in the Large Dome Greenhouse of the Mykola Hryshko National Botanical Garden, where the required temperature regime for the plants could not be maintained.

The Botanical Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine stores more than four thousand species of plants from all over the world, including rare and endangered species that are of important scientific and environmental importance. For their proper preservation, a stable temperature of not lower than +18°C is required, but in January, due to regular power outages, the temperature in the greenhouses dropped to several degrees above zero.

The worst situation is observed in the exhibition greenhouses that are accessible to visitors. The employees of the institution are forced to resort to open fire and temporary furnaces to partially increase the temperature. In the stock rooms where the most valuable plants are stored, limited alternative heating sources work, but they are still not enough.

Specialists of the botanical garden note that at present there are no financial possibilities to provide a full-fledged backup power supply. The loss of tropical collections could mean the destruction of unique genetic material accumulated over years of scientific activity.

The energy crisis caused by Russian aggression is having an increasingly negative impact not only on the daily life of Kyiv residents, but also on the preservation of national science and natural resources.