Key features of hydroecologist Vadim Gontarenko's scientific and environmental conservation activities

2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of hydrologist Vadym Gontarenko. Vadym Mykolaevich Gontarenko was born on January 26, 1926, in the village of Ignativka in the Kirovohrad region, to a doctor's family. In June 1944, at the age of eighteen, Vadym Gontarenko went to the front. He was wounded and shell-shocked several times in battle. He was awarded military decorations - several orders and many medals. While still a student intern, V.N. Gontarenko traveled to the banks of the Dniester River, a place he had come to love, to a hydrological station he had helped establish in the village of Mayaki. It later became the main base for student internships and a natural testing ground for scientific hydrological research. After graduating from university, V.N. Gontarenko was assigned to Kazakhstan, where he held the high and honorable position of head of the regional hydrometeorological service - a position highly respected for a young specialist. But in 1960, Professor A.N. Befani invited his protégé to head a hydrological station on the Dniester, in Mayaki. V.N. Gontarenko happily accepted and, together with his young wife, Raisa Pavlovna Romanovskaya, a graduate of the biology department at Odessa University, returned to the Dniester, where he began active scientific and environmental work. He also contributed significantly to the development and optimization of environmental releases from the Dniester Hydroelectric Power Station dam and the creation of the Lower Dniester National Nature Park. Vadym Gontarenko died on November 6, 2000, in his official position on the banks of the Dniester, leaving a will for his descendants: "Protect the Dniester River."