“It might be the highest density of trout species on Earth,” says podcast guest Ulrich Eichelmann of Balkan countries’ riverine legacy, which has become threatened by a tsunami of hydroelectric dam proposals in recent years: 3,200 mostly small hydropower plants are proposed to be built in the next few years, his organization Riverwatch estimates.

So Riverwatch partnered with EuroNatur to launch Scientists for Balkan Rivers, a corps of researchers from around Europe that rapidly assesses the biological diversity at stake — from mollusks to mammals, bugs and birds — if the Europe’s last free-flowing rivers disappear under reservoirs.

They’ve documented great biological richness and also identified species new to science, a heritage that looks likely to protect these rivers from flow-altering energy projects.

Ulrich Eichelmann is an ecologist and conservationist who has spent the past three decades working to protect and restore Europe’s rivers. Eichelmann is the founder and CEO of Austria-based NGO Riverwatch, as well as the coordinator of the Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign, an initiative that aims to better understand the impressive variety of life that depends on the rivers of the Balkan Peninsula, and to protect those rivers from being dammed.

Save the Blue Heart of Europe has managed multiple science weeks so far, the most recent of which was this summer on the Neretva River in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and one of the most successful of which, on the Vjosa River in Albania, factored into a successful campaign to have the site of a massive dam proposal declared as a national park instead.

Eichelmann shares his thoughts on these efforts and why, as he says, the work is so important from many angles:

“Beside all the facts about biodiversity, hydropower, and megawatt-hours, it’s a story about beauty.”

Europe already has more than a million barriers like dams on rivers, with 23,000 of them registered as hydroelectric units, Eichelmann says. But with climate change-induced drought threatening to diminish their capabilities, momentum for the campaign to keep these Balkan rivers flowing freely has increased.

Eichelmann was featured extensively in a documentary film, Blue Heart: The Fight for Europe’s Last Wild Rivers, produced by outdoor gear company Patagonia, view it here.

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Editor’s note: The number of Balkan dam proposals previously cited of 2,796 was updated to Riverwatch’s latest estimate of 3,200.

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