Lower Danube Green Corridor

Credit: Credit: NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Posted on: Wednesday, 26 November 2003, 06:00 CST Download full size image

Several central European nations have banded together in an ambitious project to protect and restore one of Europe’s most important wetland ecosystems: the Lower Danube River. Since the end of the 19th century, the Lower Danube has lost nearly 80 percent of its wetlands in the human drive to control floods, create farm and grazing land, generate electricity and make water transport easier. Now Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine have committed to the Lower Danube Green Corridor project, currently Europe’s largest international wetland preservation effort. The Danube Delta is already protected as part of a biosphere reserve, an oasis of natural vegetation in a sea of farmland for resident and migratory waterfowl and other wildlife. The restoration project will add dozens more protected areas to the existing ones—forming a green corridor that will stretch from Yugoslavia in the west to the Black Sea in the east. This is an ASTER image.

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