The Danube Delta

Situated in Ukraine, Romania and Moldova, the Danube Delta is Europe’s largest remaining natural wetland. This unique and extensive ecosystem of unaltered rivers, lakes, marshes, steppes, dunes, lagoons and climax forests is home to more than 60 species of fish, including four species of sturgeon, and mammals such as otters and the European mink. Breeding bird colonies totalling tens of thousands of individuals (notably terns and herons), including several globally threatened species, also inhabit the area. They include most of the global population of pygmy cormorant and most of Europe’s populations of white and Dalmatian pelican. Some 50 kilometres north-east and functionally connected to the delta’s wetlands, the protected Tarutino Steppe in Ukraine is a unique landscape and the largest remaining piece of Pontic Steppe in the Danube Delta region.

Project context and opportunity

Despite the Danube Delta being the largest surviving wetland in Europe, widespread development of infrastructure during the twentieth century has led to a deterioration in local water quality, salinisation and biodiversity loss. Associated attempts to “tame” natural river dynamics have negatively impacted local inhabitants, particularly fishing communities, and much of the resulting infrastructure that has caused these impacts is now dilapidated and obsolete.

The steppe areas surrounding the delta were once inhabited by large herds of wild horses, saiga antelopes, aurochs and wild ass (kulan). During times of severe drought or intense cold these herds would enter the fringes and larger dune systems of the delta and play a role in shaping these landscapes.

Agricultural developments have led to the disappearance of these large herbivores and connections between the steppes and the delta wetlands have been broken.

This rare ecosystem could be restored as a living landscape, managed and maintained by herbivores and birds through the reintroduction of keystone species such as saiga antelope, kulan and the demoiselle crane.