Paddles for Protection

Grassroots River Conservation – Balkan River Defence

Balkan Rivers Tour turned into an annual paddling action, and the river conservation movement evolved into Balkan River Defence (BRD) – a registered NGO in Slovenia which has become a leader in environmental conservation nationally. It is a version of grassroots activism where science and river conservation blend with kayaking and adventure sports.

Balkan River Defence’s Mission is to DEFEND the remaining free flowing rivers of Europe, EXPOSE hydropower as unsustainable energy, PROVIDE alternatives through science, education, creativity and adventure sports and SUPPORT a network of local river activists.

From Canada to Slovenia

How did I get involved in BRD? I met Rok shortly after he finished the first BRT while I was working as an editor for a whitewater kayaking magazine. He wrote a story for the magazine, we kept in touch and he invited me to join the Balkan River Tour 2 team as the writer and…the rest is history. I moved to Slovenia four years ago and since then we have been running the NGO together with a small team of filmmakers, photographers and volunteers. We have created a formula that makes nature conservation inclusive, fun, and light. And effective. Together with a greater network of river conservation NGOs throughout the Balkans, we have helped stop seven dams so far, and have supported many small, locally-organised river defence movements.

We have helped stop seven dams so far, and have supported many small, locally-organised river defence movements

The Undamaged Documentary

In 2019 we produced a documentary which tells the story of BRT1 and also the story of the rivers of the Balkans. The Undamaged takes viewers on the wild ride that was Balkan Rivers Tour 1 and presents the rivers and villages of the Balkans, from the seat of a whitewater kayak. The Undamaged was screened at mountain film festivals around the world including Kendal Mountain Festival, Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival and over 40 other festivals where it won 13 awards. The film was made to share the plight of the rivers of the Balkans, and support the locals working to protect their waterways, and it has been an effective tool for raising awareness and inspiring action, so we made it available to stream for free from our website.

Paddling Slovenia’s Sava River for BRT5

We have since completed BRT3 (2018), BRT4 (2020) and this year we were (finally, after a year’s delay) able to pull off BRT5. We had originally planned to kayak the entire Sava River, from its source in the Julian Alps of Slovenia, to where it drains into the mighty Danube River in Belgrade, Serbia. We set aside an entire month, invited all our friends, gathered gear and research equipment and made an interactive map of the 1000km river trip through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. But when gatherings and international travel were banned, we had to get creative. So, we abandoned the standard Balkan Rivers Tour recipe of paddle, protest, press release, party, and came up with the idea to take a small crew – just four kayakers and a small media team – down the Slovenian stretch of the Sava, and make a documentary from our journey. This way we would achieve the original objectives of Balkan Rivers Tour 5 (BRT5) – showcase the Sava, and stop the 10 proposed dams – with different means.

We split the four kayakers into two crews, and each duo started paddling one of the two sources of the Sava River; the north fork, called the Sava Dolinka and the south fork, the Sava Bohinjka. The two groups met on day two at the confluence and continued together for the next nine days. Along the way, we worked together to complete the first continuous waterfowl survey of the Sava River during nesting season and also the first complete environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling of the Sava. And our media crew captured all the moments along the way.

Along the way, we stopped at predetermined locations on the river to collect eDNA samples with the goal of being able to provide another method of quantifying impacts man-made barriers have on the river. Using a drill machine to power a water pump, we pushed river water through special filters, that a crew of ichthyofauna specialists will later analyse in the lab for the presence of fish DNA (isolated from skin, scale, and feces particles caught in the filter), to get a picture about the fish diversity in the threatened and last free flowing section of the Sava.

For the water bird survey, we needed only our eyes and notebook. We divided the river into segments based on the type of river stretch (free-flowing, dammed, altered, etc.) and helped Bor count every water bird we saw, recording the data to a Slovenia ornithologist database.

In contrast of the upper Sava – where our gravel bar camp spots reminded me of a river back home in Canada – we had to portaged around more than a dozen dams throughout the trip. And with each one, our collective mood worsened. The contrast of knowing what the upstream, free-flowing sections of the Sava looked and felt like was particularly painful. This helped us realise our forced modifications to downsizing the tour turned out to be a benefit, allowing us to focus only on the Slovenian stretch of the Sava, which is the most threatened, with ten new dams planned. This was why the bird survey and water sampling were especially important; collecting data was actually more important than collecting film footage, as it would become our ammunition for the fight to keep these dams from being built, and the film would be the vessel to distribute this information.