Balkan activists keep fighting for Europe’s last wild rivers

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — It took a decade of court battles and street protests, but Balkan activists fighting to protect some of Europe's last wild rivers have scored an important conservation victory in Bosnia.

A new electricity law, which passed Thursday, bans the further construction of small hydroelectric power plants in the larger of Bosnia’s two semi-independent entities. Still, the new law only highlights the long road ahead to protect such rivers across the entire Balkans from being degraded, diverted and commercialized by people with connections to the region's corruption-prone political elite.

“This is extraordinary. It will become the role model for other European countries, I am sure,” said Ulrich Eichelmann of the Vienna-based conservation group River Watch and coordinator of the Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign to protect the entire network of wild Balkan rivers.

Since it was launched in 2013, the campaign has brought together environmental activists, conservation groups and local people to jointly fight for protection of what it calls “one of the most important spots for European biodiversity.” It says the Balkans has over 28,000 kilometers (17,400 miles) of waterways in pristine or near-natural state, with “extensive gravel banks, untouched alluvial forests, deep gorges, spectacular waterfalls and even karstic underground rivers.”

Overall, more than 2,700 large and small hydropower plants are projected to be built on these Balkan rivers, including some inside national parks.

Bosnia alone has 244 rivers and had plans to build over 350 hydropower plants with the installed capacity of up to 10 mW — or more than one on every waterway.

“This whole business with small hydropower plants began some 15 years ago when investors started visiting...