Poland road plan threatens wildlife in peatland

Bowing to pressure from environmentalists, the Prime Minister of Poland said yesterday he would hold a local referendum to decide whether to build a controversial road through one of the most beautiful areas of the country.

Plans to build a highway through the Rospuda Valley, a virtually untouched area of peatland on the border of Lithuania, have sparked a major controversy both in Poland and in Brussels with environmentalists warning it could have a catastrophic effect on local wildlife.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who admitted that protests against the scheme had become a "national problem", told reporters: "According to law, this controversy can be solved in one way only: by asking the opinion of the residents of the region."

The highway is part of a plan initiated long before Poland's accession into the EU to build an international motorway that would link Warsaw to Helsinki via the Baltic states and is part of a larger plan to increase Poland's road network six-fold by 2013.

But environmentalists in Poland rejected the idea of a local referendum and said the whole country should vote on the issue instead.

Mr Kaczynski is clearly unimpressed by the arguments of environmentalists. He added: "The choice is between a route that's been worked on for 10 years or a route ecologists have come up with."

Since its accession into the EU two years ago, Poland has benefited from billions of euros in infrastructure funds. A sizeable proportion of that has since been piled into the roads which, outside of the cities and major highways, have suffered from years neglect and are often in an extremely poor condition.

The Polish government hoped the plan to build a road through the Rospuda Valley would alleviate congestion in the town of Augustow where 4,500 heavy-goods vehicles pass through on their way to and from Lithuania every day.

But the European Commission has said the road would violate EU law because the Rospuda Valley is a protected area, and has even suggested that it could ask the EU's highest court to block the building of the motorway.

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