In the Balkans, researchers mobilize to protect a wild river

[Disir]

Five years ago, researchers from across Europe converged on a cold, fast-moving river in the highlands of Albania for a week of intensive fieldwork. Their mission: to kick off a multiyear effort to assemble a detailed ecological portrait of the Vyosa River, one of Eastern Europe’s last free-flowing waterways. They hoped to draw public attention to the river’s rich wildlife and persuade policymakers to protect it from a cascade of proposed dams.

Earlier this month, that effort paid off when Albania’s prime minister pledged to create a Wild River National Park that would protect some 500 kilometers of the Vyosa and its tributaries from hydropower development.

Now, scientists are hoping to replicate that success along another imperiled waterway in the region: the upper Neretva River, which is threatened by some 70 proposed dams. Next week, three dozen researchers—including experts on fish, amphibians, and invertebrates—will fan out along the river’s headwaters in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of Neretva Science Week, which aims to catalog species that depend on the river.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

Seventy dams? This is worth protesting.

 

[JGalt]

Five years ago, researchers from across Europe converged on a cold, fast-moving river in the highlands of Albania for a week of intensive fieldwork. Their mission: to kick off a multiyear effort to assemble a detailed ecological portrait of the Vyosa River, one of Eastern Europe’s last free-flowing waterways. They hoped to draw public attention to the river’s rich wildlife and persuade policymakers to protect it from a cascade of proposed dams.

Earlier this month, that effort paid off when Albania’s prime minister pledged to create a Wild River National Park that would protect some 500 kilometers of the Vyosa and its tributaries from hydropower development.

Now, scientists are hoping to replicate that success along another imperiled waterway in the region: the upper Neretva River, which is threatened by some 70 proposed dams. Next week, three dozen researchers—including experts on fish, amphibians, and invertebrates—will fan out along the river’s headwaters in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of Neretva Science Week, which aims to catalog species that depend on the river.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

Seventy dams? This is worth protesting.

Yeah. Europe doesn't need electricity. They can go back to living in their caves with wood fires.

 

[1srelluc]

Five years ago, researchers from across Europe converged on a cold, fast-moving river in the highlands of Albania for a week of intensive fieldwork. Their mission: to kick off a multiyear effort to assemble a detailed ecological portrait of the Vyosa River, one of Eastern Europe’s last free-flowing waterways. They hoped to draw public attention to the river’s rich wildlife and persuade policymakers to protect it from a cascade of proposed dams.

Earlier this month, that effort paid off when Albania’s prime minister pledged to create a Wild River National Park that would protect some 500 kilometers of the Vyosa and its tributaries from hydropower development.

Now, scientists are hoping to replicate that success along another imperiled waterway in the region: the upper Neretva River, which is threatened by some 70 proposed dams. Next week, three dozen researchers—including experts on fish, amphibians, and invertebrates—will fan out along the river’s headwaters in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of Neretva Science Week, which aims to catalog species that depend on the river.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

Seventy dams? This is worth protesting.

Maybe they need 70 dams, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates not withstanding.

 

[Disir]

Yeah. Europe doesn't need electricity. They can go back to living in their caves with wood fires.

If they keep it up, they sure can.