In the light of international standards, and the track-record of other countries, Ukraine is achieving good results in developing practical legal principles for conservation of biodiversity and landscape variety. There is now the prospect of a common national policy, and the formation of effective measures for its realization, with regard to development of market relations, and non-state forms of property and business. It is necessary to bring the issue up the national agenda and move from local forms of conservation to regional and international approaches and to the formation of a national system of protected areas. For this, laws on landscapes protection, natural vegetation, and a system of specially protected areas need to be passed. A very urgent matter is the reform of the country's land-tenure system, with the aim of decreasing the area under plough, and excluding from agricultural use plots which are valuable for nature protection. The questions of who owns genetic resources, and what access foreign countries should have to their use have to be settled. Creation of collections, trade and export of biodiversity, and the ecological security of biotechnologies are matters to be resolved. It will be very important to produce a single list of animals and plants which need special treatment, according to international laws, and to endow that list with a legal status. Accompanying changes in tax legislation and other laws are urgent. Establishment of a National Council for Conservation of Biodiversity and Landscape Variety is desirable, and Ukraine should join the Washington Convention CITES on rare species trade (1973) and the Bonn Convention on protection of wild migrant species (1979).