Macedonia dam faces the axe over risk of Balkan lynx extinction

Controversial €100m hydropower project likely to lose funding after Bern Convention warns of ‘decisive negative impact’ on the critically endangered lynx

Arthur Neslen

Friday 30 October 2015 11.11 GMTLast modified on Friday 30 October 201511.35 GMT

A controversial €100m (£71m) dam project in a Macedonian national park is expected to be scrapped after independent experts called for a halt to all funding and construction work because of risks to critically endangered species, including the Balkan lynx.

A Bern Convention mission to the Mavrovo national park reported that the planned hydropower dam there was “not compatible” with protection of the park’s status, ecosystems or species.

The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has put up €65m in loans for the project but its environmental guidelines forbid the funding of projects prohibited by the Bern Convention, a legally-binding pact between 51 states.

If the report is approved by its standing committee in December – usually a formality – the EBRD will then have no option but to pull out of the project.

A bank spokesperson declined to comment until the committee’s vote. But Ivana D’Alessandro, the secretary of the Bern Convention warned that they should be prepared to reconsider their funding.

“If I was a decision-maker in the EBRD I would really think carefully about the next step,” she told the Guardian. “It would not be good for the bank’s image to finance something which 51 countries, with scientists and policy-makers, consider dangerous for biodiversity.”

D’Alessandro added that the draft recommendations would almost certainly be adopted, putting “political pressure” on Macedonia – a signatory – to find another location for the dam, not least because the secretariat would now be monitoring the park’s situation.

“It seems that we are on the verge of a historic success in the fight against hydro dams in Mavrovo national park,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, the founder of River Watch, an Austrian NGO that campaigns on this issue. “It is very important for all the national parks under threat from these types of project.”

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Emergency rescue appeal launched to save the world's second largest Siamese crocodile population

Hydroelectric dam threatens importat population of Critically Endangered Siamese crocodiles

March 2013. Fauna & Flora International has launched an emergency public appeal to raise funds to save a critical breeding population of some of the world's last remaining Siamese crocodiles.

Hydropower dam
The construction of a hydropower dam in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains will obliterate the second largest population of Siamese crocodiles if they are not immediately relocated.

5% of world population

On 8 February, it was announced that a hydropower dam will be built by the China Guodian Corporation on the Areng River. The dam will erase the river's resident Critically Endangered Siamese crocodiles - at least 5% of the global breeding population - and force six villages to relocate. The company aims to begin construction in July.

The Areng River is well known to Fauna & Flora International (FFI). For more than a decade, the Cambodian Crocodile Conservation Programme, a joint initiative between FFI and the Cambodian Government's Forestry Administration, has been working with indigenous people to conserve the Critically Endangered Siamese crocodiles. Through the support of this programme the local communities have successfully protected crocodiles from poaching, habitat degradation and human conflict.

The Areng River crocodile population is now stable at 30-40 adults and subadults. As the second largest known Siamese crocodile population in the world, this site is one of only a handful where this species breeds. This important population, and FFI's conservation work here, was featured by National Geographic and the BBC's Saving Planet Earth.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/cambodia-crocodiles013.html#cr