JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The fighting in Ukraine is now dominated by drones. They've had a devastating effect on human life. A U.N. report earlier this year said that short-range drones are the deadliest threat to civilians in Ukraine, but experts are now also sounding the alarm over the long-term effects of drone debris, saying it could pose serious harms to both wildlife and people. In particular, researchers are focused on a type of drone that is tethered to the ground with a fiber-optic cable. The thin cable looks like a fishing line and unspools as the drone flies away. And once the drone crashes or explodes, the cable remains, and it's littered all over the Ukrainian front lines.
Here to talk more about this is Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory in the U.K. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DOUG WEIR: Hi. Thanks for having me on.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. So Doug, if you could, just start by telling us, according to your estimates, how much of this cable is out there?
WEIR: It's very difficult to say. Some of the data on how many drones are being produced is not entirely clear, but we think that Russia's producing around 50,000 of these drones every month, which assumes that around 50,000 of these drones are being used and destroyed. We also think that this year, Russia will need about 6 million kilometers of fiber. So for reference, that's around seven times to the Earth and the moon and back.
SUMMERS: Wow.
WEIR: So we think it is a huge amount. We've tried to do some calculations, and that suggests that for every kilometer of the front line, we think there might be around 2,900 kilometers of this plastic cable.
SUMMERS: That is a large number, indeed. What effects could these discarded cables have on wildlife there?
WEIR: Yeah, this is one of the key issues. And we worked with a conservation specialist who looks at the impact of war on migratory birds, and he was really concerned. So this stuff is left hanging in trees. It's left hanging across fields. It's going to be there. And it's going to be impacting birds, bats, mammals through entanglement, essentially, and then preventing them from moving to different habitats.
SUMMERS: And then what about people? Are there any direct threats to people who live in areas where these cables are strung sort of across the landscape?
WEIR: Yeah, I think one of the key concerns will be what happens next. So when the front line moves, or post-conflict in the future, this stuff is going to have to be cleared. And until it's cleared, it's standing in the way of a lot of things. So for organizations who are clearing land mines, for example, this stuff will get wrapped around axles of vehicles. It's going to be really obstructive to their work. Similarly, in many of these areas, they're affected by landscape fires, so, again, fire-fighting vehicles won't be able to get to front lines.
So it's a huge problem which is going to have to be cleared. And while it might be somewhat simpler to clear from agricultural land - again, this is going to impact return of agriculture - it's going to be really complicated to try and move from tree lines or from forests and woodland.
SUMMERS: Land mines, as well as unexploded bombs, also pose a risk to people and animals after conflict ends. How would you compare the risk of these cables compared to, say, undetonated explosives?
WEIR: I think one of the key things for us is that this has never happened before. We don't really have any baseline data on these impacts. These drones only started being used around 18 months, two years ago as a response to trying to get past electronic warfare, which was causing drones to drop out the sky. So they start using these fiber-optic cables to control them so they can't be interfered with. And this usage has just exploded, and we have never really seen this impact before. So at the moment, it's very speculative, trying to figure out how it's going to impact the environment, how it's going to impact people and how it compares to other war remnants which we typically see in these areas.
SUMMERS: The risk that these cables pose to wildlife seems far overshadowed by the very deadly impact that drones themselves have had, killing civilians there in Ukraine. How do you contextualize these two different dangers?
WEIR: Yeah, I think this is a question we face a lot. So we look at the environmental dimensions of conflicts and military activities, and it's often the case that people will say, well, why are you concerned about the environment in these contexts? But actually, when you step back, you realize that people rely on the environment. The livelihoods in these areas rely on the environment. We don't really see this difference between the two, and it's perfectly possible to be concerned about both these things simultaneously.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory. Thank you so much.
WEIR: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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