The chestnut leaf miner is destroying Kyiv’s chestnut trees: residents are asking the authorities to intervene
Kyiv residents are being urged to support a petition calling for systematic protection of the capital’s chestnut trees from the chestnut leaf miner moth. To this end, the petition proposes using microinjections to help protect the trees from pests.
The petition’s author emphasizes that the chestnut tree is one of the capital’s symbols and is depicted on Kyiv’s official coat of arms. At the same time, the trees are suffering from the chestnut leaf miner and fungal infections. As a result, they may turn yellow and lose their leaves as early as mid-summer.
Microinjection technology (trunk vaccination) will help save the chestnut trees. The treatment protects the tree for 2–3 years by eliminating the pest from within the canopy without harming the environment or city residents.
The signatories are calling on city authorities to develop a separate program to protect the chestnut trees, allocate funding for it from the city budget, and begin a large-scale treatment of trees this spring, starting with the most affected historic and central streets of the capital.
How does chestnut “vaccination” work?
Mari Kinovich, a Kyiv resident and illustrator, has firsthand experience with this procedure. She explained that in the summer of 2024, she noticed a large chestnut tree near her home. Although the tree looked healthy in July, within a month it had turned yellow and begun to lose its leaves.
“Trees are a very important part of my life, so I thought I wanted to find a way to somehow improve this chestnut tree’s life,” she wrote.
She reached out to arborist Volodymyr Vetrogadskyi. He advised her to contact the “Green Clinic,” where they “vaccinate” chestnut trees with a treatment against the chestnut leaf miner.
“And then everything happened very quickly: I called, they asked me to measure the trunk’s circumference (the amount of treatment and the price depend on this), and literally within a week a specialist arrived and completed the treatment in 10 minutes,” Mari says.
The very next year, according to the Kyiv resident, the difference between the treated and untreated trees became noticeable.
She paid about 100 euros for the treatment of her chestnut tree. She notes that the price depends on the size of the tree, so the cost may vary from case to case. She plans to have the next treatment done in three years and is also considering vaccinating a neighboring tree.
How much will the treatment of chestnut trees cost?
According to Oleksiy Pavlenko, there are about 25,000 chestnut trees on the city’s books.
The author estimates the average cost of a certified microinjection procedure (including the medication and specialists’ labor) at 65 euros (2,925 hryvnias) per tree. Depending on the volume of the purchase, the price—according to the calculations provided in the petition—could range from 50 to 80 euros.
At an estimated cost of 65 euros per procedure, treating all the trees would cost approximately 73.1 million hryvnias. If the procedure is performed once every 2.5 years, the average annual cost would be approximately 29.2 million hryvnias.
The author of the petition calculated that the share of annual expenses for saving the chestnut trees amounts to about 0.026% of Kyiv’s total expenditure budget, which, according to the document’s calculations, is 113 billion hryvnias.
“This will completely solve the problem of chestnut trees drying up on the city’s streets, preserve the ecological balance, reduce air pollution, and restore the city’s authentic green appearance. The sum of 29.2 million hryvnias per year is a pittance to pay for preserving Kyiv’s centuries-old symbol,” says Oleksiy Pavlenko.
Oleksiy Pavlenko registered the corresponding petition on the Kyiv City Council website. As of September 10, the petition had gathered 3,630 votes out of the 6,000 required.
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