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Second largest stream in Europe, the Danube river had formed some of the greatest wetland areas on the way down to the East towards the Black Sea.
Even here the floodplain wilderness has not an end at all, creating the natural paradise of the Danube Delta.
Sadly vast parts of the landscape are already destroyed by monstrous power plant dam walls, cutting off the floodplains from the necessary regular flooding.
Several parts are converted to crop fields, "tree factory"-like forests, construction sites or "recreation supermarkets" with a lot of concrete and the "benefits" of a greedy leisure time industry.
All this has an impact on the remaining nature areas too - dams inhibit the necessary flooding far downstream as well. Conservationists struggle to save those sparse left-overs by otherwise never necessary interventions into the fragile ecosystems.
Hainburg 1984 became history - it was for the second time only (after a similar Tasmanian event) that peaceful demonstrators succeeded to stop a major damage on a nature area by a dam project.
Any of the Danube floodplains are major bird places, supplying shelter and food supply for the annual North-South migrators and for a large number of permanent residents.