Eco-protest in eastern Europe: Trouble in paradise valley

On one side of the argument there are eagles, wolves and orchids; on the other side there are endless heavy lorries and burgeoning economic growth. Welcome to Europe's new environmental battleground.

The conflict is coming to a head for the first time in a pristine valley in north-east Poland, crammed with spectacular wildlife, which has been earmarked as the route for a badly-needed motorway to the Baltic states. The clash of priorities has bitterly divided public opinion in Poland itself and has now set the country on collision course with the European Union.

Yet the struggle to save the Rospuda valley is only the first of many conflicts likely to arise between economic development in the new EU member nations of central and eastern Europe, and their wildlife heritage.

Species which have long been rare or extinct in western European countries, such as lynx, elk, wolf and beaver, along with scores of uncommon bird species, from eagles to corncrakes, still have substantial populations in the 10 central and eastern European nations which have recently joined the EU.

In Poland and the other member states which joined in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), as well as in Bulgaria and Romania, which joined this year, two remarkable habitats in particular act as giant wildlife reservoirs for Europe as a whole.

One is the vast extent of ancient forests, some of which are still primeval - meaning they have never been cut down and replanted - and the other is the great range of wetlands in river valleys, flood plains and deltas.

The Rospuda valley combines both. The Rospuda river flows through the ancient Augustow Forest near Poland's border with Lithuania, one of the most pristine forest regions in all of Europe; and the river's course is bracketed by a peat bog which is astonishingly rich in mammals, rare birds, plants and insects.

In environmental terms, the valley is a jewel. Yet it sits squarely astride the route for one of Europe's most ambitious road schemes, the so-called Via Baltica expressway from Warsaw to Helsinki, which will pass through the Baltic states. The section of the new road which is intended to be the bypass for the small town of Augustow, where two routes from Warsaw join, is planned to go right through the valley's heart.

Environmentalists contend that the road will irreparably damage the valley, and insist an alternative route, further to the west, must be used; the Polish government, riding a wave of new prosperity with annual economic growth running at 6 per cent, and desperate to upgrade its transport links with its neighbours as quickly as possible, insists that the Rospuda route is the right one, wildlife or no wildlife. The people of Augustow, who are sick of the unending procession of heavy lorries through their town, heartily agree.

The issue has sparked a clash reminiscent of the British road-building protests which began in 1989 with the dispute over the route of the M3 motorway through Twyford Down in Hampshire - although in wildlife terms, the stakes are far, far higher.

A survey carried out by the Polish Bird Protection Society, Otop, has found that within 750 metres each side of the centreline of the proposed expressway as it passes through the valley, no fewer than 20 species of birds are breeding which are specifically protected, as rare or threatened, under European law.

They represent a British birdwatcher's dream, ranging from the white-tailed, short-toed and lesser-spotted eagles, through the black grouse and the capercaillie, to the corncrake, the crane and the great snipe. But there is much more. Among a profusion of rare wildflowers, there are 20 orchid species in the valley, including the last colony in Poland of the musk orchid Herminium monorchis, and mammals which are resident or pass through the forest and the marsh include lynx, wolf, elk, wild boar, otter and beaver.

The Polish centre-left national daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, has taken up the cause of saving Rospuda, and has given away green lapel ribbons for supporters to wear. An electronic petition on its website, to shift the road to an alternative route, has attracted 150,000 signatures, and last month, when it was thought the first tree-cutters were about to move in, a group of green activists from all over Poland set up a camp in the snowy forest and climbed into the trees to stop them.

But not everyone agrees with them. Two weeks ago last Sunday, several hundred people from Augustow, encouraged by local politicians, came out to confront the greens, shouting: "Ecologists, murderers!". They distributed wooden crosses which they said represented the children knocked down and killed by the heavy lorries passing through the town. A heavy police presence was necessary to stop an ugly clash turning violent.

Now the conflict has intensified still further, and moved on to an international level. The European Commission in Brussels is taking up the case, and the Polish government is finding that EU membership carries duties as well as benefits.

Poland's membership of the European Union is giving the country an economic boost - it has already received $14bn in EU funding - but it is its EU membership which means the government may have to think again about Rospuda. For when the country acceded in 2004, it was obliged under EU law to declare some of its best wildlife sites as protected areas in the EU's Europe-wide Natura 2000 network.

Rospuda is one of these, part of the Augustow primeval forest special protection area (SPA), declared under the EU's 1979 wild birds directive. This lays down that if a development is likely to harm a protected site, alternatives have to be explored. Polish environmentalists have complained to Brussels that this has not been properly done with Rospuda, nor has it been done in four more SPAs that the Via Baltica is likely to damage.

The EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, has accepted their argument, and asked the Polish government to refrain from pushing the road through the valley - or face prosecution in the European Court of Justice. Last week, Poland delivered its answer to Brussels, which, although it has not yet been published, is credibly rumoured to have contained a message along the lines of "go and take a running jump".

It is hard not to feel some sympathy for the Poles, who have been pushed around by stronger nations throughout their history; many Polish politicians feel this is happening with the EU now, and resent it strongly. And it is hard not to sympathise with the citizens of Augustow who have to live with an ever-increasing procession of heavy lorries.

But it is harder still not to feel aghast at the scale of the environmental wreckage that putting a modern expressway through the Ropsuda valley will cause. When The Independent visited the valley last week, the forest was resounding to the calls of the black woodpecker, a spectacular red-crested bird the size of a crow, and when we walked out into the peat bog a large wild boar moved off into the forest on the valley's other side. The valley itself was filled with the haunting, trumpeting calls of cranes which had just returned from their wintering grounds in Spain.

Someone who knows it and appreciates its value more than most is Gosia Znaniecka, the Otop caseworker for Rospuda. "I have such a feeling for it," she said. "When I came here, it was amazing to see so many treasures in such a small area. It is unique. If we allow a road to be constructed through here, it will be OK to repeat such things elsewhere. If we fail here, we will fail in many other places."

But it is not just Polish eyes that are turned on the valley. "To put a road through Rospuda would be the wilful destruction of some of Europe's most wonderful wildlife sites, for no good reason," Graham Wynne, the chief executive of Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said. "We sympathise with the need for economic development, but there is a perfectly good alternative route. The Polish government seems so hell-bent on disregarding international law that it makes one wonder about their motivation."

Whatever happens, the government will not have it all its own way. Although the main road protesters' camp has broken up for the moment, a core of activists remains on the site to watch for the approach of bulldozers or men wielding chainsaws.

"If anybody comes, we will telephone Greenpeace," said one of the protesters, Kalina Sczawinska, 33, from Warsaw. "There will be 200 people here within a few hours."

It's the spirit of Twyford Down, the spirit of the Newbury bypass, the spirit of Swampy - remember him? - and it's alive and kicking in the forests of Poland, and now the stakes are higher than ever.

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