We develop deeply grounded accounts of the responses of leaders and staff members of two Ukrainian nature parks to the Russian invasion since February 24, 2022, to build theory on organizational adaptation and leadership during sustained “cosmological” crises—continued disruptions of actors’ fundamental sense of coherence, order, and meaning. Our emerging ideographic-narrative accounts—induced from interviews, meetings, quasi-participatory reflections, and rich secondary data—reveal leaders’ and staff members’ resilience, especially as they discovered innovative ways to realize their socio-professional callings and identities even while they were unable to access the occupied natural habitat. We contribute to strategic crisis management research which has studied “cosmology episodes”—particularly from behavioral perspectives—but offers little insight into continued extreme crises such as those caused by armed conflict and natural habitat devastation.
