WHEN you see the abandoned construction site, it isn’t hard to marvel at what could have been. We floated round a bend in the river on our raft and there it was: two colossal artificial banks beneath scarred hillsides, stranded diggers and cement hoppers.
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| Albania’s Vjosa river, dubbed “Europe’s last wild river” Lukas Bischoff Photograph/shutterstock |
These are the forlorn remains of the Kalivaç dam project on the Vjosa river in Albania, which has been dubbed “Europe’s last wild river”. If the developers had had their way, this would now be the site of a 43-metre-high hydroelectric dam with a vast reservoir behind it. Instead, in March, the Albanian government declared the entirety of the Vjosa and many of its tributaries a wild river national park, the first (and probably last) of its kind in Europe – saved in perpetuity from a fate that has befallen too many of the rivers in this part of the world.
The Vjosa is special because it is entirely free-flowing. Aside from the remains of the Kalivaç project, there are no dams, barriers or artificial banks. It will now stay that way. Mostly.
Dams generate hydroelectric power, but are disastrous for biodiversity and other crucial ecological gifts rivers bestow upon us. So the saving of the Vjosa is a big win for nature – including the critically endangered Balkan lynx and European eel – and an inspiration for other river conservation projects. It is also a rare bit of good news against the backdrop of the shocking state of many of the world’s rivers. But the battle to save the Vjosa isn’t quite over yet, as I saw for myself when I visited in March.
All rivers used to be free of human-made impediments, of course, but few are now, especially in Europe. “That’s what rivers do – they flow,” says biologist Olsi Nika at EcoAlbania, an NGO based in Tirana that has been battling to save the Vjosa. “If you block the flow, it’s not a river. From the flow are depending a lot of other ecosystem features and ecosystem services, like fish migration, sediment flow, natural purification.”
Yet humans have long interfered with this natural state of affairs. Many of the world’s rivers, especially those in more densely populated regions, have been impeded by dams or other barriers to enable transport, irrigation, water supply and, more recently, to generate hydroelectric power. The result is that free-flowing rivers are increasingly rare, with their many upsides often overlooked in the rush to generate green electricity as part of the shift to low-carbon economies.
The giant dam planned for the Vjosa – which rises in Greece and flows for 272 kilometres, via Albania and into the Adriatic Sea – would have condemned the ecosystem benefits it provides to a watery grave. “This is the last river of this size [in this region] that is fully natural,” says Andrej Sovinc at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), who is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is now protected not just from the threat of dams, but also gravel extraction and other damaging activities.
Drowning rivers
With the dam in place, sediment would have backed up against the structure, leading to severe sediment starvation and erosion downstream, and shrinkage of the river’s delta on the Adriatic coast. Migratory fish such as European eels and salmon would have been unable to get past it. The dam would also have turned 14.5 kilometres of river upstream into an 18-square-kilometre reservoir. “Rivers can drown too,” says Ulrich Eichelmann, the CEO of Vienna-based NGO Riverwatch, which was part of the campaign to establish the national park.
There would have been other impacts too. “Upstream of a dam, you get kind of a lake system that is completely different from what it was before, populated with completely different species,” says Ulrika Åberg of the IUCN in Gland, Switzerland. “And downstream, you also completely change.”
Some dams create a uniform flow downstream, which homogenises the river system, destroying seasonal pulses of water that many fish use as cues for breeding or migrating, and making the habitats less variable. “You often get a very monotonous system that doesn’t have a large variety of riffles and pools and different morphological features that are important for the ecosystem,” says Åberg. Other dams generate electricity by day and store water at night, which leads to a phenomenon called hydropeaking, where the level of the river can rise and fall several metres over each 24-hour cycle. “There are not many species that can adapt to that,” says Åberg. The Kalivaç dam was going to operate with a daily hydropeaking system.
Dams can also affect the temperature of the water, again disturbing the natural habitat. “Hydropower is renewable, but it’s not green because of the damage it does – it is irreversible,” says Besjana Guri at EcoAlbania. Yet hydroelectric dams are subsidised by the European Central Bank as green energy, says Beth Thoren, environmental action and initiatives director at the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which bankrolled the campaign against the dam.
The Kalivaç threat surfaced in 1997, when the Albanian government awarded an Italian company a contract to build a 108-megawatt power plant across the lower reaches of the Vjosa. Albania’s post-communist development was largely powered by hydroelectricity and it wanted more. Construction started in 2007, but the project was plagued by financial problems and endless delays and a decade later, with only 30 per cent of the work completed, the government pulled the plug.
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| The abandoned site for the Kalivaç dam on the Vjosa river Nick St.Oegger |
The contract was then re-awarded to a Turkish-Albanian consortium. By then, however, environmental organisations, lawyers and scientists were on the case with a multi-pronged campaign to protect rivers in the region, called Save the Blue Heart of Europe. It persuaded the Albanian government to think again. In 2020, the then environment minister, Blendi Klosi, reviewed the consortium’s environmental impact assessment and deemed it inadequate. Scientists also argued that, given the extremely high sediment load of the river, the dam would silt up completely in 30 to 40 years, rendering it obsolete and a net financial liability. Together, these damning verdicts killed the project and opened the door to the establishment of a national park.
The Vjosa is a sight to behold for somebody like me, unused to seeing what rivers looked like before they were “improved” by humans. Its upper reaches tumble through stunning gorges and canyons and under ancient stone bridges nestled between snow-capped peaks. Lower down, it barrels across a huge gravel riverbed up to 2 kilometres wide. The channel continually splits and rejoins to create ribbons of blue-green water, oxbow lakes and temporary islands on which rare birds nest.
Flamingos, pelicans and spoonbills
In its last few kilometres, the Vjosa becomes a classic lowland river with a single, languidly meandering channel. After 272 free-flowing kilometres, it eventually empties into the Adriatic Sea at a delta rich with charismatic birdlife, including flamingos, Dalmatian pelicans and Eurasian spoonbills.
“There are no [other] such deltas like the Vjosa in the Adriatic,” says Sovinc, a former civil engineer who now works to prevent his old profession from destroying biodiversity. “I think it is one of the few deltas in Europe that is still growing because of natural sediment transport,” says Åberg. “You have a lot of sediments coming in, but dams stop that and the delta will be eroded by wave action.”
The river itself is a biodiversity hotspot. “There are more than 1200 plant and animal species, some of them only found here,” says Sovinc. One important species that depends on the river is the critically endangered Balkan lynx. There are only an estimated 120 individuals left in the world, with 15 or so in Albania. European eels – also critically endangered – would have been severely impacted too, no longer able to access 880 kilometres of the river and its tributaries upstream of the dam. A further 72 of the species found in or around the Vjosa are endangered, according to an impact assessment. This assessment concluded that the dam “would lead to the destruction of one of the most pristine wild river landscapes in Europe”.
For now, the national park only encompasses the river itself, its bed and some land next to it, and the same for some of its major tributaries, the Drinos, Kardhiq, Bënça and Shushicë. The total area is 127 square kilometres, about a tenth the size of the average UK national park. It is classed as a category II protected area under IUCN guidelines, the third level of protection below Ia (strict natural park) and Ib (wilderness area). This isn’t a slight, but a recognition that the river is inevitably impacted by human activity, such as farming, and also that it has significant development opportunities for sustainable tourism and recreation, says Åberg.
The next phase of the project aims to extend the park further out onto the floodplain, to some smaller pristine tributaries and to the river delta, which isn’t currently included, but arguably ought to be. “The delta is a part of the river,” says Sovinc.
That is a huge bone of contention. In 2004, the whole delta was designated as a protected landscape – a lower level of conservation than the wild river national park – but in 2022 the government unilaterally unprotected part of it so an international airport could be built.
Tourism trap
Vlora International Airport is intended to be the acorn of a mighty tourism industry on the coast north of the delta. The campaign is far from happy about it and has filed a lawsuit to stop its construction, but was publicly and forcefully told by Albanian prime minister Edi Rama at the inauguration of the park that “the airport will be built” and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. I went there; it is already under construction and due to open to 1.5 million tourists, including from North America, next year.
The airport is very close to a lagoon called Narta where the pelicans and flamingos feed. It is a key stopover on the Adriatic Flyway, a major route for birds migrating between Europe and Africa. When I was there in March, there were flocks of swallows bringing summer to the north. Loggerhead turtles nest in the delta’s sand dunes and will probably be severely affected by the noise and artificial light, says Zydjon Vorpsi of conservation group the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA).
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| Flamingos in the Vjosa river delta REUTERS/Florion Goga |
There is another important wetland about 35 kilometres up the coastline, the Divjakë-Karavasta National Park, where the pelicans breed. Exactly what effect the airport will have on them and the flyway is unknown, says Vorpsi. But the runway could disrupt their commute between the wetland sites and their willingness to live nearby. “Pelicans are endangered and a species very sensitive to disturbance,” says Sovinc.
Opinion is divided on whether the airport really is a major threat to the delta. “Even if there is an airport, it has been built on the area which has not the most important conservation value,” says Sovinc. Not so, says Nika. “The full delta is part of the river, you can’t judge what is important and not important. The most important part of the river is the continuity of its ecosystems.”
But the airport may be just the start. “We fear it is actually just the beginning of further infrastructure investment in the area,” says PPNEA executive director Aleksandër Trajçe, “because the area there has amazing virgin beaches, amazing wetlands, amazing landscape, so we fear that huge tourism resorts are going to be developed.”
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| Aerial view of the river flowing through Albania into the Adriatic Sea Tsado/Alamy |
There is also the problematic fact that the Vjosa is a transnational river, rising in the Pindos mountains in Greece. Within Greece, much of the Aoös – as the river is called there – and its major tributary the Voidomatis are inside the Northern Pindos National Park, but substantial sections near the border aren’t. The Greek government is considering whether to extend the park to protect them.
Dams are also a problem in Greece – not massive ones like the Kalivaç, but small hydropower plants on fast-flowing mountain tributaries. Four are already in operation on tributaries of the Aoös, says Alexandra Pappa at the Mediterranean Institute for Nature and Anthropos, an NGO based in Athens, and there are plans for 45 more. Nobody has modelled what would happen to the Vjosa if they were all built, she says, but her guess is that they would have a negative impact on sediment transport.
Another issue facing the Vjosa is plastic pollution. The bushes and trees lining the lower reaches of the river are festooned with ugly plastic bags, the legacy of a dysfunctional waste disposal system in Albania, according to Gabriel Schwaderer, executive director of the NGO EuroNatur based in Radolfzell, Germany. One of the first tasks for the national park authority is a litter pick, but it will be a mammoth job. Other major hurdles lie ahead. The park needs to have effective management and sustainable tourist infrastructure, such as hiking trails, put in place, says Thoren.
The Vjosa Wild River National Park is a magnificent, if flawed, win for nature, which could be an inspiration for other river conservation and restoration projects, says Pappa. But it also begs an uncomfortable question about our general attitude towards our rivers. At the park’s inauguration, Albania’s minister of tourism and environment, Mirela Kumbaro Furxhi, celebrated the achievement of protecting this river, but asked a pointed question of the international audience: “What have we done to the others?”
Save Britain’s Rivers
This feature is a part of our Save Britain’s Rivers campaign.
Source: New Scientist
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