Riverwatch
The fight to protect the last free-flowing rivers of the Balkans — from the Vjosa to the Neretva and Drina. RiverWatch and EuroNatur's campaign against a wave of roughly 2,700 planned dams, told river by river. Rivers unite, dams divide.
A chronological documentary of 27 moments spanning 1900–2026 on Loreline.
last updated 2026-07-16
Eras
- The Blue Heart — Why the Balkans hold Europe's last wild rivers — pristine canyons, gravel braids, and species found nowhere else. The natural capital that a dam boom would erase.
- The Dam Tsunami — The campaign launches in 2012 as roughly 2,700 hydropower projects are mapped across rivers from Slovenia to Greece. The first battle lines form around Mavrovo and the Sava.
- The Vjosa — Europe's last large wild river becomes the campaign's centrepiece — from threatened dam sites to the world's first Wild River National Park, declared in March 2023.
- Neretva & Drina — The fight moves to Bosnia and Herzegovina — the emerald Neretva and the Drina at Buk Bijela — where scientists, kayakers and locals confront a new generation of dams.
- The Reckoning — A decade on: rivers won and rivers lost. Pristine stretches measured, dam permits rejected, UNESCO status secured — and the threats that haven't gone away.
- — The Balkans — Europe's last wild rivers. The Balkan Peninsula holds the most intact river systems left in Europe: roughly a third of its rivers still run free, in a near-natural state long lost across the rest of the continent.
- — What a free-flowing river is. A free-flowing river runs from source to sea without dams, weirs or diversions — moving sediment, fish and floods on its own terms. They are now among the rarest landscapes on Earth.
- — The Huchen — the Danube salmon. The huchen (Danube salmon), a giant predatory fish reaching over a metre long, survives in the Balkans' cold clear rivers. Dams fragment its habitat and block its spawning runs; it became a symbol of what hydropower destroys.
- — The Balkan lynx — riverside ghost. Fewer than 50 critically endangered Balkan lynx survive, many in the river valleys and mountains of Mavrovo and the Albanian Alps — the same wild basins targeted for hydropower.
- — The Tara — Europe's deepest canyon. The Tara River carves the deepest canyon in Europe through Montenegro's Durmitor, a UNESCO World Heritage site. A 2004 grassroots campaign already saved it once from the Buk Bijela dam downstream.
- — Save the Blue Heart of Europe launches. RiverWatch and EuroNatur launch the "Save the Blue Heart of Europe" campaign, mapping the threat: roughly 2,700 hydropower plants planned across Balkan rivers from Slovenia to Greece.
- — Mavrovo National Park under threat. Two large dams (Boškov Most and Lukovo Pole) are planned inside North Macedonia's oldest national park, Mavrovo — core habitat of the Balkan lynx. The campaign makes it an early flagship fight.
- — The Sava — a river across four countries. The Sava, the Danube's largest tributary by discharge, runs through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. Its surviving wetlands and gravel banks become a test case for cross-border river protection.
- — World Bank pulls out of Mavrovo dam. After sustained campaigning, the World Bank withdraws its loan for the Boškov Most dam inside Mavrovo National Park, and the Bern Convention recommends suspending the project — the campaign's first major win.
- — Balkan Rivers Tour — kayakers join the fight. Slovenian kayaker Rok Rozman launches the Balkan Rivers Tour, paddling threatened rivers across the peninsula to draw the world's attention to the dam boom. Activism meets whitewater.
- — The Vjosa — Europe's last wild river. The Vjosa runs roughly 270 km from Greece's Pindus mountains through Albania to the Adriatic, undammed along its main stem — a braided, free-flowing river of a kind that has all but vanished from Europe.
- — The Poçem dam goes to court. Albanian and international scientists and lawyers sue to stop the Poçem dam on the middle Vjosa. A court suspends it — a landmark legal win establishing that the river's ecology must be assessed first.
- — The women of Kruščica guard the bridge. In the village of Kruščica, local women occupy a bridge for over a year to block machinery building two dams on their river — one of the most celebrated acts of resistance of the whole campaign.
- — Patagonia's "Blue Heart" film. Outdoor brand Patagonia releases the documentary "Blue Heart", following the fight for the Balkans' rivers and the people resisting the dams. It carries the campaign to a global audience.
- — The Neretva — emerald river of Bosnia. The Neretva runs an unmistakable emerald-green through Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. Its wild upper reaches, rich in endemic species, face a cascade of planned hydropower plants.
- — Scientists count the Vjosa's life. An international "science week" surveys the Vjosa and finds more than 1,100 species, including over a thousand animal taxa and two new to science — hard evidence that the river is a biodiversity treasure, not an empty valley to flood.
- — Vjosa declared a Nature Park. Albania designates the Vjosa and its free-flowing tributaries a Nature Park in 2021 — the legal stepping-stone toward full national-park protection, after years of campaigning by RiverWatch, EuroNatur and Albanian partners.
- — Buk Bijela on the Upper Drina. Construction begins on the Buk Bijela hydropower plant on the Drina near the Montenegro border — a project critics say was launched without proper transboundary environmental assessment, threatening the Tara–Drina canyon system.
- — Neretva Science Week. Dozens of scientists from across Europe gather on the upper Neretva to inventory its species before the dams arrive, documenting an exceptional concentration of endemic and undescribed life.
- — Vjosa Wild River National Park. In March 2023 Albania declares the Vjosa Wild River National Park — the first national park in Europe to protect an entire wild river and its tributaries. A model for river conservation worldwide.
- — The Ulog dam on the upper Neretva. The Ulog hydropower plant rises on the upper Neretva despite years of protest, becoming the focus of the campaign's fight to keep the river's wild headwaters intact.
- — 2,450 km of pristine river lost. A 2024 assessment finds that the share of pristine Balkan river stretches fell from about 30% to 23% since the campaign began — a loss of some 2,450 kilometres of near-natural river, with Albania deteriorating fastest.
- — Fish die-off below the Ulog dam. In September 2025 a mass fish die-off is discovered on the upper Neretva, seven kilometres downstream of the newly built Ulog hydropower plant — a stark illustration of a dam's reach.
- — Vjosa becomes a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. In 2025 the Vjosa is designated a UNESCO "Man and the Biosphere" Reserve, layering international recognition on top of its national-park status and cementing it as a global symbol of river restoration.
- — A UNESCO complaint for the Studenica. Citizens and NGOs file a formal complaint to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre over hydropower threats to the Studenica basin in Serbia, home to a medieval monastery already on the World Heritage list.
- — 163 scientists oppose Buk Bijela. In 2026, 163 scientists issue a joint statement against the Buk Bijela dam on the Upper Drina, citing a deeply flawed environmental impact assessment — the scientific community lining up behind the rivers.
- — The Nevačka dam is rejected. In March 2026 authorities in Republika Srpska reject the environmental study for the Nevačka small hydropower plant, sparing another stretch of the Bosna basin — proof that the wave of dams can still be turned back.
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