fish kills
Lemke expects great damage for Oder
Dead fish in the Oder. photo
© Patrick Pleul/dpa
Countless fish died in the environmental catastrophe in the Oder. The fish kill is also a setback for a rearing project.
According to Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens), the dramatic fish kill in the Oder has caused long-term damage.
“In the Oder as an ecosystem, far greater damage was caused than the fish kill alone. The first test results give reason to fear that there could be more serious damage,” she told the editorial network Germany. On Monday, Lemke and her Polish colleague Anna Moskwa also want to talk about the environmental disaster at the German-Polish environmental council in Bad Saarow. A reintroduction project for the Baltic sturgeon has already suffered a severe setback.
Exact cause still unclear
Masses of dead fish had been discovered in the German-Polish border river. The exact cause is so far unclear. Experts assume that high salinity in the river is a major reason, combined with low water, high temperatures and a toxic species of algae. By Saturday a week ago, around 200 tons of fish carcasses had been collected in Poland and Germany. Environmental groups are calling for an Oder rescue plan. From Germany there was criticism of Poland’s information policy, Poland’s government spoke of “false news” from Germany.
“The causes have not yet been finally clarified,” said Lemke. They assume man-made water pollution, probably in combination with heat. According to information from the Brandenburg Environment Ministry, the first results of a bilateral group of experts on fish kills will be presented at the environmental council on Monday.
The former Brandenburg Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck (SPD) calls for long-term consequences for the preservation of the Oder. “I very much hope that not only will the causes be clarified, but that above all everything will be done to prevent recurrences,” said Platzeck of the German Press Agency. “That’s not out of the question.”
The head of the river fisheries department at the Polish Institute for Inland Fisheries, Piotr Parasiewicz, calls for more refuges in the Oder. A small flood wave could end the fish die-off in the next few days, the second scenario is that pollutants accumulate in the Szczecin Lagoon and the fish die-off lasts longer, he told the “Tagesspiegel” from Berlin.
Concern about sturgeon rearing
In a sturgeon breeding station in Friedrichsthal (Uckermark) near Gartz in the Lower Oder Valley National Park in Brandenburg, a third of the 20,000 offspring have already died because contaminated Oder water flowed through the facility. The remaining specimens, three to five centimeters in size, were released during an emergency rescue into polder waters in the national park that have no connection to the border river. Since the start of the project, 3.5 million mini sturgeons have been raised and then released into the Oder.
Fisherman Lutz Zimmermann said: “Due to the contamination, a third of my animals suddenly swam keel up.” During a rescue operation, he released the remaining small sturgeons into widely branched polder waters. An expert has hope: “But it’s not a total failure, because sturgeons are a very long-lived fish species that can live up to 100 years and can also survive poor environmental conditions,” said Jörn Gessner from the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin. He assumes that the sturgeons will return once the river has regenerated and the animals find food and spawning grounds there.
The WWF Germany considers the Oder to be poisoned over a large area. In order for the river ecosystem to recover, the food webs must function again, the environmental organization demands. The WWF is urging Poland to stop the planned expansion of the Oder. Brandenburg’s Environment Minister Axel Vogel (Greens) wants to reaffirm his rejection of the expansion at the Environmental Council.