Erstellt am: 14. 10. 2011 - 17:42 Uhr

A Paradise Threatened

A biodiversity hotspot along the Danube is in peril. A Saturday Reality Check special (12-13).

Last Sunday a group of 40 environmental activists from Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Serbia, wearing winter jackets and woolly hats against the cold of Autumn, launched a flotilla of boats and brightly coloured canoes into the part of the Danube that separates Croatia and Serbia.

It was a protest armada aimed at urging the Croatian government to heed commitments it made this April to protect the 5-nation Transboundary Biosphere Reserve „Mura-Drava-Danube” which has been called the Amazon of Europe because of its meandering leafy beauty.

wwf

WWF

This Saturday's Reality Check special comes from this European Amazon. I'll take you inside the biosphere on a boat trip through slow moving channels where cormorants thrive and river-turtles laze on tree trunks. We travel through the Kopački rit wetlands, where river channels cut through a marshy forest that was heavily mined during the war that ripped apart Yugoslavia 20 years ago. Now the wetlands provide a welcome haven for shy red deer and a nesting place for rare white-tailed eagles. It is a gorgeous area – but this might be a glimpse into a disappearing world. The conservationists from the WWF as well as the local Croatian NGO Zeleni Osijek and the Croatian Society for the Protection of Birds and Nature warn that the Croatian plans to improve the navigability of the Danube will be a death sentence for this area if they are not stopped.

Croatia plans to regulate over 100 kilometres of both the Danube and Drava rivers which converge in this marshy forested corner of eastern Europe where Croatia borders Hungary and Serbia. The plans involve concreting up the sandy banks and building arms of rock piles called groins that stretch out into the water sideways from the banks and interrupt the natural flow.

The conservationists says the engineering must be halted or the rivers will be reduced to the state of “lifeless canals” that would starve not only the Kopački rit in Croatia but also the „Gornje Podunavlje” Special Nature Reserve in Serbia of the floodwater they both need to flourish.

wwf

WWF

The protest flotilla was launched at Croatian village of Batina, a huddle of white-washed red roofed houses and a baroque church. It was here where the Red Army crossed the Danube in November 1944 in a fierce and bloody campaign that is now commemorated by towering white Soviet memorial. Batina is also where the engineering work on the Danube would begin – stretching 50 kilometres down the great river to the town of Osijek where it is met by the Drava. Croatian environmentalist Tibor Mikuska says that such industrial engineering is “ugly and unnecessary” and Arno Mohl, the International Freshwater expert at WWF Austria says the channeling project is “a criminal act not only against Croatia’s but also Europe’s natural heritage.”

The leader of the regulation project at the Agency for Inland Waterways, Miroslav Istuk, denies the regulation is unnecessary, referring to “several strandings” at times of low water including vessels carrying oil. He says the engineering works is being carried out in accordance with Croatian and EU legislation and in compliance with the Transboundary Biosphere Reserve. He insists that the planned river regulation will have only “minor influence” on the Kopacki rit wetlands and that no-one in Brussels has raised concerns about the project.

Some conservationists have complained of corruption in the political system. Goran Safarek, a Croatian conservationist and photographer, claims that the same people who plan the projects are often also the owners of the private building companies that will carry out the river engineering. But this charge is denied by Istuk, who says that international bidding procedure will be carried out and that no one can predict which construction company will get this job. But the environmentalists are not convinced. Jasmin Sadikovic from Green Osijek is sure that the engineering plans will only benefit the building firms „We are not going to accept that the livelihoods of local people and our unique environment are sacrificed for the benefit of a small group of profiteers ” he says.

A Reality Check Special from the Amazon of Europe: