Belarus’s Council of Ministries officially announces a 10,000-hectare expansion of the Almany Mires Nature Reserve. The reserve now covers more than 104,000 hectares – about the size of Hong Kong. Almany is Europe’s largest intact transition mire, and together with protected areas across the border in Ukraine, it forms the largest complex of bogs and mires on the continent. This unique landscape is one … Read more
A section outlining plans for the construction of the E40 waterway through the Ukrainian Chernobyl exclusion zone will be removed from the draft 2030 Exclusion Zone Development Strategy. This revision was announced by a representative of the State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management (SAZM) during an online meeting on February 11 2021. Attendees of the … Read more
On the occasion of this year’s “International Day of Action for Rivers”, the Save Polesia coalition are relaunching a petition to allow the general public to raise their voices to save Europe’s largest wetland wilderness. This Sunday, March 14 2021, people from all over the world will celebrate the ‘Rights of Rivers’. Now, everyone can … Read more
This week, the Working Party on Inland Transport of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will hold its 58th session from 17-19 February 2021. Agenda items include a workshop on “Climate change and the extreme water situation on European waterways and its impact on inland water transport” as well as updates on existing inland … Read more
The Ukrainian Minister of Environment, Roman Abramovsky, has stated that “the Ministry will insist on Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessments” being carried out before work on the E40 waterway moves forward. Abramovsky made this statement on Facebook following a meeting with a group of environmental activists and NGOs, held at the Ministry of … Read more
The Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, or OTOP, has just released the winners of their ‘River Theme’ photo competition. Running from July to November, the competition called on locals and visitors to submit photographs of the rivers of the Polish part of Polesia. This covered the Vistula from the estuary to Dęblin, the … Read more
An article released in the Guardian today highlights the serious lack of proper risk assessments for the proposed E40 waterway. As yet, a strategic environmental assessment has not been undertaken for the 2000km-long, mega-infrastructure project spanning Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Despite this, dredging as part of its construction has already been launched in Ukraine’s Chernobyl exclusion zone. While in Poland the construction of the Siarzewo Dam on the Vistula – one of more than 13 planned as … Read more
A panel of 25 experts identified 15 top emerging issues of concern for global biodiversity conservation in 2021. The planned construction of the E40 waterway through Polesia is one of them. The annual review paper ‘A 2021 Horizon Scan of Emerging Global Biological Conservation Issues’ is published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. From a long … Read more
As of today, people across the globe can watch a new film about Polesia on an innovative, interactive streaming platform – the Waterbear Network. The documentary ‘Europe’s Secret Eden: Polesia’ features spectacular footage of this wetland wilderness, and provides insights into the efforts of dedicated conservationists from the international coalitions Save Polesia and Wild Polesia. … Read more
The brand-new documentary ‘The great extinction of species’ reports on the problems of, and solutions to biodiversity loss. Leading scientists, conservations and economists discuss this issue of global concern – not only on a local, but also on a national and global scale. As part of this story, the German-language ARD film shows impressive footage of Polesia, referred to as the Amazon on the doorstep of Europe. … Read more