Steven Weiss: Challenging thee Hydro Power Lobby

Steven Weiss:

Challenging the Hydropower Lobby

Steven Weiss is an expert resource on Eurasian salmonids, who is associate professor at the University of Graz, Austria. His research activities span diverse interests in the conservation, ecology and the evolution of freshwater fishes. He uses genetic-based approaches to answer population genetic and phylogeographic questions on the current structure, diversity, and evolutionary history of salmonid fishes, such as European and Asian graylings (Thymallus sp.), whitefishes (Coregonus sp.), brown trout (Salmo trutta), soft-mouthed trout (Salmo obtusirostris), belvitca (Salmo ohridanus), lenok (Brachymystax lenok), and Danube salmon and Taimen (Hucho spp.), and Sahkalin taimen (Parahucho perryi).

By THE EDITORIAL STAFF Pictures by RASMUS OVESEN, AMEL EMIC, GORAN SAFAREK, LUKA TOMAC, and RIVERWATCH

Besides his academic career, Steven is also involved in the conflicts concerning the uncontrolled expansion of hydropower in Austria as well as other regions of the world. According to Steven, «the expansion has reached a level of fanaticism that not only wholly ignores facts and scientific understanding, but also subjugates all other environmental issues as well as the diverse interests of its citizens to the single-minded wishes of the energy industry and its associated financial backers».

We’ve sat down with Steven for a chat about his work and the challenges involved with saving the last wild rivers and fish populations in Europe.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and who you are?

Yes, sure. I am originally from the USA, where I received my bachelor’s and master’s degree in ecology and natural resource management. I came to Austria in 1994 to work on my doctoral thesis at the agricultural University in Vienna, which focused on an applied fish ecology topic – namely the effects of stocking fish on wild populations.

Since 2002 I have been an assistant and now Associate Professor here in Graz, and the focus of my research is on salmonid fishes (trout, salmon, grayling, etc.), using genetic approaches.

Do you have a special connection with the natural world and rivers in particular?

I began to fish as a young child following in my father’s footsteps, and I was an avid backpacker in my teenage and young adult years – these hobbies were often done in combination – I loved hiking to remote lakes and streams in mountainous areas and learning about different species and strains of wild trout.

What is your biggest concern with regards to the aquatic environment across Europe and the Balkan region in particular – especially rivers and fish stocks?

Continental Europe is of course largely a cultural landscape, and rivers have been already impacted in numerous ways due to intense agriculture and forestry, water pollution, urbanization, flood protection, shipping, and exploitation for the generation of electricity among other things.

Over the years, we have learned to mitigate some of these problems; for example, there has been great improvement in curbing both industrial and domestic sources of pollution. In other areas the negative effects have been somewhat stabilized – we learn better how to manage forests sustainably, and urban growth is not ubiquitous, and/or has slowed in some regions. But energy exploitation is on the rise everywhere – for the Balkan region, which contains some of the longest reaches of free-flowing rivers in continental Europe, the foreseen growth in hydropower exploitation is unprecedented and alarming.

What are the biggest threats to Balkan fish stocks?

The combination of expanding hydropower expansion and climate change, especially in the more southern portions of the Balkan region.

Do you have any key facts to underline or impress the severity of the problems faced by Balkan fish stocks?

Climate models foresee an up to 40% reduction in annual rainfall in the southern half of the Balkan region, from Croatia to northern Greece, an area already known for droughts and high temperatures. Hydropower schemes often extract water from rivers, or for storage plants. It stagnates the flow of water, which results in rising temperatures, altered flows, and the massive accumulation of fine sediments. Expanding hydropower exploitation in a region where water itself will become increasingly scarce is a recipe for disaster. For the endangered Huchen, five of the remaining six longest river stretches with high quality habitat for the species are in the Balkans, and all of them have planned hydropower schemes, which are incompatible with the survival of the species.

What is Save the Blue Heart of Europe?

It’s a campaign by the NGO River- Watch carried out to raise awareness of the natural beauty and biodiversity of Europe’s last near-natural and free-flowing rivers in the Balkan Peninsula, as well as the tremendous threat that massive hydropower expansion poses to these values and services.

How did you get involved with the Blue Heart campaign?

I have been involved in various scientific and popular science activities surrounding hydropower projects for some years, but my activities got a lot of public awareness as I joined up with a local intiative in Graz to fight against new power plants on the Mur River. I think these activities first brought me in contact with Ulrich Eichelmann from RiverWatch. After meeting him he invited me to a few press conferences, and I got involved in reviewing some documents for RiverWatch and eventually helping out with some publications. Then, I carried out a largely evaluation for them on the future risks of endangered fish species in the Balkans.

What is the main objective of the Blue Heart campaign?

Clearly to raise awareness of the dire threats that extensive hydropower expansion poses to our last free-flowing rivers and river stretches in the Balkans, but also to engage directly in promoting protection of these rivers at various different levels, whether through supporting activism, legal or scientific analysis, and political lobbying.

What is the purpose of the new “Scientists for Balkan Rivers” network?

The ultimate goal is of course to help support the protection of Balkan rivers, but this network specifically aims to bring many scientists together from different fields and countries to share information, build synergies and real cooperative projects that provide both baseline information and impact assessment concerning the fauna and flora of Balkan river landscapes. Such data can be used in environmental impact studies, public awareness programs and legal challenges to attempted environmental degradation.

Several Balkan fish species are critically endangered. Do you think we’ll be able to preserve them?

As long as a species and its habitat still exist at some level, then there is the potential of preserving them. Their demise is not written in stone, but these critically endangered species will continue to decline, and the threat of extinction increase if action is not immediately taken.

What measures can you employ to restore rivers to their “natural state” – and how do the rivers and fish respond?

River restoration is a broad field that has been around for many decades and is very variable both in the actual kinds of measures taken as well as levels of success. The most important issue is first to be sure you have identified precisely what the problems are, which is sometimes straightforward but at times, or at least in detail, is not always as obvious as people like to assume. In theory, any problem can be resolved, but certain levels of restoration can become wholly impractical, or at least very limited, the more culturally constrained a landscape become.

In relatively natural settings, simply removing dams, for example, can have tremendous restorative effects – and this is being increasingly pursued where it is feasible. Most measures focus on directly attempting to restore the natural dynamic flow of water, as well as movement of sediments, as well as restoring the morphological structure of the river channel to its natural course. Once flow of water and natural sediment dynamics are re-established, nature can begin to do its work, and some degree of restoration proceeds naturally.

Where the landscape is more culturally constrained by urban or suburban development “restoration” become more-like mitigation, as one attempts to provide specific elements, sometimes wholly artificial (like fish passage, or in-stream structures), that promote some aspects of biological productivity or diversity, without actually restoring anything to its natural state.

What is your most important message to policy makers and those in power?

I always like to emphasize that we do not have an energy crisis, we have an environmental crisis, and while this environmental crisis includes concerns of global warming, the issue of climate and environmental protection are inseparable.

How can people across Europe get involved and help make a difference?

Show interest in free-flowing rivers, whether at home or abroad. Visit them, swim, boat, or fish in them and show your interest in terms of spending time and money on them. Rivers have numerous values, many of which have direct economic potential to local communities. There is nothing more valuable to promoting both awareness and immediate protection to a river than people showing up, and showing interest. If you don’t show interest now, they may be gone before you ever get to see them in their natural state.