Aspects of human pressure on the environment

The Danube has built one of the most beautiful deltas in Europe, perhaps in the whole world, at its empty in the Black Sea. The Danube Delta is a natural museum of biodiversity of wetlands inhabitants, with 30 different types of ecosystems, more than 1,600 plants species and over 3,450 fauna species represented by insects, birds, fish, mollusks, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. It is the only delta declared a Biosphere Reserve by the Man and Biosphere Programme of UNESCO.

For a long time the human influence on the delta environment had a conservatory character. Time after time this influence became destructive. We identified four hard man interventions affecting the delta ecosystems: (1) Sulina Branch arrangement for navigation at the end of the 19^th century, which broke the Delta unity and changed the flow regime of the river; (2) building of tens kilometers of channels for a better communication between the Danube branches and the lakes in the area at the beginning of the 20^th century; (3) intensive reed harvesting in the 1950s-1970s, for the cellulose and paper industry. Thus lots of pelicans, cormorants and herons colonies were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of birds were shot; (4) change of thousands of hectares of virgin lands into agriculture ones in the early 1980s.

Since 1990, after the communism breakdown, the Romanian government has been concerned to restore seriously damaged sites in the Delta, through projects regarding the reasonable development of agriculture, industry, pisciculture and fishing, reed harvesting, transports and tourism.