Danube Excursion: Vienna—Bratislava

by Laura Kuen

Traveling from Vienna to Bratislava, our day’s topics branched in quite different directions: water power and nature conservation. We first visited the Austrian National Park Donau-Auen in Orth and later the Gabčíkovo Dams, Slovakia’s biggest hydroelectric plant.
Conservation in the Donau-Auen

The national park, which spans the distance between Vienna and Bratislava, finds its roots in a story of resistance, years of struggle, and constant negotiations between opposing forces. Our guide, Manfred Rosenberger, whose personal biography is deeply interwoven with the park, vividly recounted the park’s history.

Map of the Donau-Auen National Park, reaching from Vienna to the Slovakian border near Bratislava.

I’ll start at the beginning of the story. In the cold December of 1984, authorities (along with the help of a major police operation) started to clear riparian woodland with the intention of building a hydroelectric power plant along the Danube at Hainburg. The project would have destroyed the last intact, free-flowing stretch of the river and its riparian forests in the country. Manfred was both one of the activists and the co-organizer of an occupation of the forest that was set up to stop the deforestation. Thousands of people, of all ages and coming from diverse social backgrounds, joined the occupation. Initially a relatively small protest, it was soon recognized by a broader public: the police use of batons against the forest squatters enraged forty thousand demonstrators in Vienna and led to general public disapproval of the planned project all over Austria. This put a stop to logging until a referendum against the construction plans was successful in the spring of 1985. A scientific study of the area followed and evidenced far higher biodiversity and more complex ecologies than expected. Most importantly, the study concluded that the area was even worthy of the status of a national park, which ended the plans of building a hydroelectric power station there once and for all. In 1996, the National Park Donau-Auen was founded.

Face-to-face encounter with typical Danube fish species at the underwater station. Photo Credit: Laura Kuen.

Curious? Read the full article on the RCC's blog Seeing the Woods.