Highway threatens nature in Poland

North-eastern Poland’s Rospuda Valley, known as the ‘green lungs of Europe’, is a Special Protection Area of Europe’s Natura 2000 ecological network. But the government has controversially decided to construct a new bypass through the valley’s forests and national parks, citing significant cuts in costs and time. The element going through the highway includes a half a kilometer long wharf, supported on pales, which would pierce 10 metres deep into the quagmire and turf.

Ecologists however say it is cheaper, more environmentally-friendly and legal for the highway to pass from the west by Augustów, a small city with 30,000 inhabitants. The day after construction began on April 4, Adam Wajrak, prominent Polish ecologist and journalist at the social liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza (‘Election Gazette’), blogged that if the bulldozing continued into the Valley, ‘it would be an important signal that the government cares neither for public protests, nor for the opinion of the European Commission.’ So far, matters are safe; the government has promised that no works will take place until the end of July, when the bird-breeding period ends.

The Paneuropean Transport Corridor, also called Via Baltica, is a fast-speed route connecting western Europe through Warsaw with Baltic countries up to Helsinki.

Read more in CafeBabel.com The European Magazine

And see how Krecik the mole, a famous Czech cartoon character from the seventies saves Rospuda Valley