Science meets commitment: Use for the Balkan rivers
When science and nature conservation go hand in hand: Susanna Ottaviani and Flamur Bajrami from the University of Trentino during the Science Week on the Sarantaporos.
You have just returned from the Science Week in Sarantaporos, Greece. What were your impressions?
Gabriel Singer: I always try to combine the Science Week with a university course, as I did this time with my Master's students. The excursion offers students a great opportunity to take part in a practical research process and to experience this fascinating river up close. For me that is also the essence of this course: for a budding ecologist or hydrobiologist of the future to be able to experience a river in two different ways. As a scientist who looks at the landscape and sees tables and diagrams in his/her head, but also as an explorer, who is enchanted by the wildness of an undeveloped river and has a sensory experience in the truest sense of the word. We’ve found this combination wonderfully successful on our trip: first, we explored the Vjosa and some of its tributaries on foot and by boat, then we investigated the Sarantaporos.
What makes the Sarantaporos so important and why is protecting it so crucial for the Vjosa-Aoos river system?
The Vjosa-Aoos river system is unique in Europe, this abundance of different habitats, unspoilt to such a high degree, is found nowhere else. In central Europe we have tamed the river as an ecosystem, taking away its ability to create its own habitats, be they gravel bars in the watercourse or steep banks along its edges. The catchment area of the Vjosa and the Aoos is completely different. The Sarantaporos in particular is very interesting from an abiotic and microbiological viewpoint. It has some thermal springs that are incredibly exciting microbiologically and it carries large quantities of sediment along, which are of huge significance for the entire river system. Without this quantity of sediment from the Sarantaporos, there would probably be none of those extensive gravel landscapes downstream on the Vjosa where the river branches out into several arms which are so important for the national park.
With our inclination to tame rivers and our need for space, space that we do not grant our rivers, the river courses of central Europe have largely been straightened. Meadows almost always go right up to the riverbank, and it is not uncommon for these areas to be built on too. The natural hinterland of a river hardly exists here. It’s very different on the Sarantaporos, where the quantity of gravel and loose stones that the river carries along gives rise to extensive gravel banks. At first sight this is not particularly pleasing visually, being more reminiscent of a moon landscape. We scientists and researchers had the sun beating down on us there and the wind blowing dust in our faces. And yet this part of the river was ecologically valuable as geological diversity often provides the basis for high levels of biodiversity. Our studies have confirmed that: grasshoppers appeared under our lenses, rare butterflies turned up in entomologists’ nets and for botanists the varied stages of vegetation succession, that is the chronological sequence of plant communities in a specific habitat, were exceptionally revealing.
So much biodiversity
Moths and butterflies, bats, fish and scorpions: the biodiversity of the riverbanks and cave systems of the Sarantaporos is amazing and reveals the high value of the entire ecosystem. (Tip: Click on the images for larger views)
Why did you join Scientists for Balkan Rivers?
I’d known about the wild rivers in the Balkans and their ecological significance for a long time. In 2016 I met Ulrich Eichelmann [Editor’s note: Head of EuroNatur’s partner organisation Riverwatch] and I also learnt about the campaign to save the Balkan rivers and the attempt to get scientists and researchers involved in their efforts from Professor Fritz Schiemer. I immediately felt this was a creative way of campaigning. My motivation for studying ecology was rooted in environmental activism. But then I found there was very little place for this in the academic world.As a student I hadn't thought of Professor Schiemer as an activist, but after he retired I was impressed to see him on the frontline of river conservation in the Balkans. I wanted to do that too – only I didn’t want to wait till I retired.
Gabriel Singer: In full flow
Gabriel Singer during a short break at the Science Week
Professor Singer is fully focussed on rivers and streams, both professionally and in his free time. The qualified limnologist and keen kayaker was born in lower Austria in 1976. He is Professor für Aquatic Biogeochemistry at Innsbruck University, working on material flow of watercourses. It important to him that his students do not just to acquire an abstract scientific understanding of the river ecosystem but engage with it on an emotional level too. For several years now, Gabriel Singer has been one of the scientists campaigning hardest for the Balkan rivers and he wants the results of his research to make an active contribution to the protection of these endangered river treasures.
‘Scientists must take more responsibility!’ Gabriel Singer is setting a good example.
Social momentum is also very important during the Science Weeks: a cheerful evening atmosphere for all participants on the market square in Vourmpiani.
This sounds like a bit of a new understanding of the role of science. Are scientists increasingly becoming people who are trying to save the world?
Science is undergoing a change. Only 20 or 30 years ago, it was almost all about getting published and of course that is still our foundation. But if our research and the publications connected to it do not lead to us managing the world better, if they do not lead us to securing the basic fundamentals of life, then I ask myself as a scientist: what’s it all for? I can research for ever but not see my data having any influence; it is not reaching the public or the political sphere. I feel there is a different approach just starting. You can see it most clearly among the climatologists, they go out on the streets. Now this change in attitude is happening among ecologists too, if a little later. As scientists we must take more responsibility and worry less about the possibility of losing our credibility or independence if we express our own opinion or take sides in public debate.
When I first heard about the campaign, I thought: that is exactly what we need to respond to the countless hydroelectric plants and dams planned for the Balkan rivers. You create a network of activists and scientists. The latter collect the data, publish it in scientific journals and at the same time the NGOs behind the campaign ensure that this data doesn’t just disappear in a specialist scientific journal but finds its way out to the public at large, receiving the attention it deserves. In addition to which, it’s a great experience for the students who make up the majority of the researchers on the Science Weeks. They get the feeling that their research can really have an effect and they are not just writing another report to be stuck in a drawer. Another point is that a Science Week like this also has a social momentum as they are embedded in a community, and particularly with those people on the ground locally. Very different types of people come together, all with a passion for the same thing, that is protecting the river.
Scientists in action
How do you rate the chances of saving our planet in general and the Blue Heart of Europe in particular?
I like to tell my students at the start of their studies that they should prepare themselves. “You’ll be spending five years hearing about the destruction of the planet and you need to find ways to cope with that and still stay motivated to keep going.” That might be by satisfying your inherent curiosity when you study a fascinating animal, for example. But it can also come from experiencing a moment of real awareness in a kayak on a wild river.” If you want to keep on dealing with the crisis in ecology over the long term, you have to have a bit of optimism. I know some colleagues who fall into a mild depression, who say we’re just recording the demise of the world. Personally, I don’t allow myself to think this way.
Not to put up a fight against the crisis in ecology, the loss of habitat and the extinction of species, when you actually know exactly what is happening, that is probably the most demotivating thing you can do.
Prof. Dr. Gabriel Singer, Limnologist and Scientist for Balkan Rivers
We are certainly going to lose a lot, for example along the Neretva in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We held Science Weeks there in 2022 and 2023 that were extremely fruitful. However, I fear we came too late at least to prevent one major hydroelectric project; the Ulog dam will probably be completed. We would need a different sort of protest there now, maybe a sit-in on the construction site. But we lack the critical numbers of activists and demonstrators for this. So a piece of the Neretva’s ecological wealth will be lost, but we will be able to preserve the ecological integrity of some other river system in the Balkans, of that I am sure. We have established the important foundations for this on the Sarantaporos.
