The Old World Swallowtail Was Removed, the Bobak Marmot Was Added: The Lists in Ukraine’s Red Book

Ukraine’s “Red Book” (Червона книга України, a Red Data Book) is the country’s official document listing rare and threatened species. The 2002 Red Book Act (No. 3055-III) sets out its legal standing, the 7 categories a species can be listed under, and what must be recorded for each species; the content of the law and the number of species on the 2021 list are introduced in our article on translating plant and animal names into Japanese.

Here we look at how the Red Book has gone through editions, what was removed and added in the 2021 list, the status of a new print edition, the penalties for violations, and the changing ministry responsible for it.

From 1980 to 2021

The editions of the Red Book and the main documents that set its lists, in chronological order:

Changes in the Name of the Responsible Ministry

The Red Book Act does not name a specific ministry, instead describing it by role, as “the central executive body implementing state policy in the field of environmental protection.” The name of the ministry that has approved the lists has changed as follows.

Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 903 of July 21, 2025 renamed the Ministry of Economy the “Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture,” abolishing the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food and transferring their functions to it. Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1029 of August 6, 2026 approved separate statutes for a “Ministry of Economy and Environment” and a “Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.” The statute of the Ministry of Economy and Environment lists managing the Red Book and approving the lists of species to add to or remove from it among that ministry’s responsibilities.

Species Removed and Added in the 2021 List

The two 2021 ministerial orders each come with, alongside the list of species to include, a list of “species removed from the Red Book.” 27 animal species and 21 plant and fungus species were removed.

• Animals: butterflies and moths such as the Old World swallowtail (Papilio machaon), the scarce swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius, Ukrainian: подалірій), and the death’s-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos, бражник мертва голова); the sacred scarab (Scarabaeus sacer, скарабей священий); the Turkish snail (Helix lucorum, слимак великий строкатий); 3 crab species (including Carcinus aestuarii); and the snake Vipera berus nikolskii (Nikolsky’s adder, гадюка Нікольського)
• Plants and fungi: the water caltrop Trapa natans, the floating fern Salvinia natans, fungi such as the red cage fungus (Clathrus ruber, решіточник червоний), lichens, and seaweeds

The lists do not state the reason for removal. The Red Book Act provides that a species is removed once, as a result of protection efforts, research has established it is no longer at risk of extinction (Article 16).

Species added include the bobak marmot (Marmota bobak, listed under “Endangered”), the little souslik (ховрах малий, Spermophilus pygmaeus), the European eel (вугор європейський), and cyprinid fish also targeted by anglers and fishers, the common nase (підуст звичайний) and the ide (в’язь звичайний). None of these appeared on the 2009 animal list, but all appear on the 2021 list (cross-checked between the two lists for this article).

Who Counted “How Many Species Were Added”?

The number of newly listed species is not stated in the orders themselves. In a February 2022 article, the conservation group Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG) states that, for animals, 171 species were newly listed and 27 removed, and for plants and fungi, 52 species were newly listed and 21 removed.

These figures are consistent with the totals on the lists. The 2009 animal list had 542 species, which became 543 when the elk was added in 2017. Removing 27 and adding 171 from that gives 687. For plants and fungi, removing 21 and adding 52 from the 2009 total of 826 gives 857 (826 being the figure from the UNIAN article).

A 4th Print Edition Has Not Yet Been Confirmed

The Red Book Act requires the Cabinet of Ministers to officially publish the Red Book at least once every 10 years. Since the 3rd edition came out in 2009, the next one should have appeared by 2019. In February 2022, UNCG reported that a 4th edition had not appeared, and that the ministry had announced a tender in 2021 aiming to publish it by “the 30th anniversary of independence,” which it later canceled.

The website of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources carries a procurement justification for preparing and publishing a 4th-edition “animal volume” for ₴3.51 million and a “plant volume” for ₴4.265 million, but no publication date is given. As of September 2026, no official announcement confirming that a 4th edition has been published could be found.

Penalties and Compensation for Violations

The Red Book Act lists violations such as destroying habitat or taking or killing a species without a permit, and leaves the penalties to other laws (Article 20). The main ones are as follows. Fine amounts are set as a multiple of the “tax-free minimum income” (неоподатковуваний мінімум доходів громадян).

Separately from penalties, the Cabinet of Ministers sets a compensation amount for each individual specimen lost. This is Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1030 of November 7, 2012, last amended, according to the legal database, in 2018 (No. 796). In its 2022 article, UNCG pointed out that species newly listed in 2021 do not appear in this table of amounts, making compensation impossible to calculate. As of September 2026, we could not confirm that this resolution has been amended to match the 2021 list.

Examples of protected areas where Red Book species have been recorded are introduced in our article on the Danube Delta reserve and our article on Ukraine’s nature reserves.