One of Europe’s last wild rivers is in danger of being tamed

— Under a broad plane tree near Albania’s border with Greece, Jorgji Ilia fills a battered flask from one of the Vjosa River’s many springs.

The Vjosa is temperamental and fickle, changing from translucent cobalt blue to sludge brown to emerald green, from a steady flow to a raging torrent. Nothing holds it back for more than 270 kilometers in its course through the forest-covered slopes of Greece’s Pindus mountains to Albania’s Adriatic coast.

Rivers are a crucial part of the global water cycle. They act as nature’s arteries, carrying energy and nutrients across vast landscapes, providing water for drinking, food production and industry. They’re a means of transportation for people and goods, and a haven for boaters and anglers. Rivers are home to a diversity of fish — including tiny minnows, trout, and salmon — and provide shelter and food for birds and mammals.

Those who live along the riverbank or rely on the waterway for their livelihood fear dams could kill the Vjosa as they know it. Its fragile ecosystem will be irreversibly altered, and many residents will lose their land and homes. Many locals oppose the plans. Dozens of residents from the village of Kute joined nonprofits to file what was Albania’s first environmental lawsuit against the construction of a dam in the Pocem gorge, a short distance downriver from Kalivac. They won in 2017, but the government has appealed.

As pressure to build dams intensifies in less developed countries, the opposite is happening in the US and western Europe, where there’s a movement to tear down dams considered obsolete and environmentally destructive.

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