Researchers from across Europe will converge on the Neretva River starting on 28 June for a “science week” aimed at building the case for conservation.
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.
“It is miraculous that these rivers have survived,” says ecologist Ulrich Eichelmann, founder of RiverWatch, a Vienna-based group behind both the Vyosa research campaign and the Neretva Science Week, which begins on 28 June. Western Balkan rivers teem with aquatic life, including the world’s highest diversity of trout species, suggesting to some researchers that they are an evolutionary cradle of trout and salmon. It’s an unexpected wilderness in a heavily developed continent, Eichelmann says.
The dam-building rush is an ecological disaster in the making, says ichthyologist Steven Weiss of the University of Graz. He fears “poorly designed and poorly managed” barriers could result in “death by 1000 cuts” along the Neretva and other rivers, with fish and other organisms losing 30% to 70% of their current habitat.During the science week, Weiss will be surveying populations of the endangered soft-mouthed trout and other endemic fish species.
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