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Europe’s little-known jungles: The riverine forests of Transcarpathia

    29 March 2024 Friday
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    The Eurovision song contest was responsible for my discovery of some of Europe’s little-known jungles.Thanks to a relaxation of visa restrictions to enter Ukraine, where the European song contest was held last year, I jumped at the chance of spending a day with a Ukrainian colleague to visit the remarkable floodplain forests of Transcarpathia — an area tucked away in the Carpathian Mountains in the north-western corner of Ukraine, close to the borders with Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.



    Emerging from customs in Chop on the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, I was met by Bohdan Prots, a young scientist working for Ukraine’s State Museum of Natural History in Lviv and leader of a WWF-supported project focused on riverine forests in the Carpathians. We immediately got in a car and headed east towards the village of Veliky Berehy. From there, we left the road and bumped and rolled across fields before coming to the banks of the Borzhava River.



    Transcarpathian jungles

    Riverine forests are the most diverse of all European ecosystems, both in terms of plant and animal life. They are also among the most vulnerable, with only a few highly threatened areas remaining on the continent. According to research conducted by Bohdan, his partner Anton Drescher of the University of Graz, and their team, the forests that I was about to visit represent one of the largest surviving fluvial forests in Europe.



    The remarkable forests that Bohdan and his colleagues have been studying and seeking to protect are the creation of the Tisza, Borzhava, Latorytsya, Uzh and other rivers that emerge from the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains and flow south and west through the Pannonian plain in Hungary, draining eventually into the mighty Danube and from there into the Black Sea. The regular flooding of the rivers delivers a rich mixture of nutrients that acts like growth hormones for the trees and plants in the floodplains.



    “Look how fast it grows here!” said Bohdan. “The track road that had existed here last year has already grown over.”



    Two storks gazed at us from their nest perched atop a high utility pole as we pushed our way through dense undergrowth and across puddles to enter the forest. Inside was a cathedral — huge ash and oak trees thrusting up from the forest floor like columns. Thick vines, clothed in moss, snaked their way up the trunks of the mighty trees. Bohdan pressed ahead, excited to be in what for him was clearly a spiritual place.



    “In the spring, this area is sometimes under a metre or more of water,” he said, marking on his leg how high the water can rise.



    Regular flooding delivers to the trees water and rich nutrients that allow the oaks and ash to grow as high as 46m in height. The floods also limit the extent to which the trees must compete with one another for water and nutrients, making it possible for them to grow so close together.



    By the banks of the river

    We came to the Borzhava River — about 5m across, swift and muddy, with steep and slippery banks covered with dense vegetation. The immense trees have deep root systems that hold the soil, allowing the river to etch out a deep and narrow course. The deep banks and river bottom, and the nooks and crannies among the roots of the trees, create a variety of habitats for numerous fish species.



    “Last year a 46kg catfish was caught here!” Bohdan exclaimed.



    The only thing disturbing the serenity of the place was plastic bottles and bags caught against a tree. The garbage will be washed away by the next floods, but only to be deposited in Hungary or further downstream. Until waste management practices change, a new mess is certain to take its place.



    Bohdan’s team, which includes botanists, zoologists and soil experts, have already completed mapping much of the Transcarpathian region. They have identified three areas with the greatest biological value, virtually unknown and unprotected to date, including 3,200ha along the Borzhava River that we were now moving through. Other areas hug the Latorytsa and the Tisza Rivers.



    Later in the day we moved on to the swathe of forest hugging the banks of the Tisza River, which springs from the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine and then meanders its way along the Ukraine-Romanian border before flowing on into Hungary. The river and the forests act as an important corridor for birds and mammals. Among the trees are many black poplars, which have nearly disappeared from other parts of Europe.



    Here come the floods

    Standing on the rust-smeared bridge near Vinogradiv, gazing at the majestic river meandering among gravel banks toward Hungary, I thought of the toxic cocktail of cyanide and heavy metals that, just five years earlier, had broken out of tailing pool near Baia Mare in Romania and poisoned the lower reaches of the river in Hungary. It drove home the common fate that connects the people living along this river.



    Devastating floods soon followed that put large parts of Romania, Ukraine, and especially Hungary under water. The 2000 deluge overwhelmed the dykes and other flood defenses, which have controlled the river since the middle of the 19th century. Since then, flood protection and management have become a focus of concern in the Tisza river basin.



    The Hungarian government, for example, has fundamentally changed its flood management policy, shifting its emphasis from technical measures to a more natural approach. A government programme has been launched to give space to the river by removing the tight corset of dykes. In particular, WWF has been working with the government and local stakeholders to restore the natural floodplain, which provides not only flood protection but also biodiversity and socio-economic benefits.



    On the upper reaches of the river in Ukraine has remained largely unregulated, with the floodplains left largely intact. The issue for flood management here is one of protection, holding onto the floodplain forests that already exist and that help to regulate the river’s regular flooding. This is becoming an increasing challenge as a result of the economic and social changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union.



    Illegal logging has also become a serious economic and environmental problem in the area. The consequences of unsustainable forestry practices are felt not only locally, but also much further downstream. The indiscriminate felling of trees, especially along the upper reaches of the Tisza, has been linked to the increasing incidence of floods, not only in Ukraine but also further downstream in Hungary as well.



    ”Forest protection is thus not just an environmental issue, but also a socioeconomic and security one, with international importance,” stressed Bohdan.



    On the map

    Thanks to their work over the past couple of years, Bohdan and his team have put the once hardly known riverine forests of Transcarpathia firmly on the map. The big challenge now is to keep them there.



    At present, the forests have no legal protection. Bohdan and his colleagues are already well-advanced in negotiating with local communities, private land owners, and the state forest company to transform the forests into a protected landscape area.



    “Some care about the nature and want to see it protected, and others see it as an opportunity to develop eco-tourism in a region with little industry or development, but many natural qualities,” explained Bohdan. “The main challenge is money. The provincial government will have to foot the bill for the new protected area, and provincial as well as communal coffers are empty.”



    But legal protection can only be considered a short-term, and ultimately defensive, measure. Over the longer term, the survival of these unique forests is connected with the well-being of the people living around them. The area is poor, with unemployment rates as high as 30 per cent or even higher. Without sustainable livelihoods, pressure on the forests will continue.



    Bohdan and his team and colleagues at WWF are now beginning to look for opportunities to generate local incomes, finding sustainable ways to draw economic profit from the area’s natural capital.



    Certainly part of the solution is close at home, drawing on traditional uses of the forests and their resources, from sustainable logging to mushroom and berry collecting. Environmentally-friendly tourism also has a role to play. Additional answers may come from across the border in Romania where WWF has been working with local farmers, foresters, businesspeople and communities to develop payments for environmental services that can help secure local incomes, while preserving the rich landscape and natural resources of the area.



    Efforts to find new ways to profit from and preserve such unique natural resources are just beginning. But already it is clear that the result of these efforts is important not only for the long-term preservation of some of Europe’s very last and most valuable wetland jewels, but also for the livelihoods of people living both near to the forests and much farther away.



    * Andreas Beckmann is Deputy Director of WWF’s Danube-Carpathian Programme.



    END NOTES:



    • WWF’s Danube–Carpathian Programme focuses primarily on freshwater and forest resource conservation in the Danube River Basin and Carpathian Mountains. The region between the Danube River Basin and the Carpathian Mountains includes all or part of Germany and Poland, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia & Montenegro, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine.



    • The Tisza River flows for 966km — including 61km in Romania — and drains into a river basin of 157,220km2. It is the largest tributary of the Danube River and remains one of Europe’s most natural rivers.

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