Young people from Tulcea, Romania, had the opportunity to learn about one of the most unusual inhabitants of the Danube – the sturgeons
Cristina Munteanu, Project Coordinator at WWF-Romania, presented the significance of protecting the ancient Danube species at the Civil Conference organized in Galati by Cristina Diaconu. Cristina Diaconu is among the outstanding students in the area awarded a scholarship from the American Councils for International Education and the American Embassy.
During the conference, held under the motto of „It is possible. Everything depends on us,” the young people were encouraged more often to get involved in their community’s activities and to organise civic initatives with focus on environmental protection. The lecturers at the conference shared good practices and success stories of similar initiatives, encouraging the youngsters to firstly start at local level and gradually to expand the scope of their activity to include other residents and interested stakeholders as well.
Cristina from WWF-Romania spoke to an audience of nearly 100 participants about sturgeons and their importance to the environmental health, a topic that sadly is not so widely discussed in the region of Lower Danube and the Black Sea Coast despite the huge impact those dinosaur fish have on the most international river in the world. She also presented one of the very few European projects aimed at protecting the Danube’s sturgeons – “LIFE for Danube Sturgeons”. Cristina’s presentation was followed by a series of open discussions that encouraged the attendees to share their thoughts on how they can help with the conservation actions for saving the iconic fish species of the Danube river.
After the last discussion, Cristina shared: „We were pleasantly surprised to see that our way of thinking, from the expert’s point of view, was not so different from the high-schoolers’. Together we came to realise that we share the same opinion on the necessary steps to be undertaken in order to generate effective solutions to the critical sturgeon situation in Eastern Europe. We learned new things and got inspired by one another’s innovative ideas, that we can hardly wait to put into action.”
Currently, WWF-DCP-Romania is working on developing a series of actions that will enable young people to actively engage in the conservation of Danube sturgeons. To find out more about the project’s upcoming activities, keep checking regularly our News & Activities section or the social media profiles of the project’s partners in Romania.
https://www.facebook.com/WWFRomania/
https://m.facebook.com/WWFCEE/
