Europe’s Delta of Striking Contrasts

By Awake! writer in Romania

 The Danube River is born in the Black Forest of Germany. As a youthful watercourse, it bounds east across Austria and along the border of Slovakia. As a mighty torrent, it pours south into Hungary and then along the border between Croatia and the country of Serbia and Montenegro. It then slows and widens as it meanders along the Bulgarian border before turning north through Romania. Eventually it laps the border of Ukraine.

Laden with silt and swollen with water from some 300 tributaries, the mature river finally gives birth to a beautiful delta on the shores of the Black Sea. Near the city of Tulcea, in southeastern Romania, the Danube’s three daughters, the Kiliya, the Sulina, and the St. George, form the main channels that empty into the Black Sea.

As these three Danube distributaries seep through the delta, they fragment into many small waterways that feed numerous swamps and lakes. Sediment from the river combines with sand from the sea to create massive sandbanks and islands. Some dunes, like those on Caraorman sandbank, are up to 20 feet high and are desertlike in appearance.

However, the Danube Delta is far more than a landscape of shifting sand and silt. The delta covers an area of some 1,660 square miles [4,300 sq km], forming Europe’s largest wetland habitat. Moreover, the delta hosts what is likely  the largest expanse of reed beds in the world, covering some 660 square miles [1,700 sq km]!

Stately forests of elm, oak, and alder flourish on a number of the delta’s sandbanks. A web of wild vine, ivy, liana, and other vegetation clings to these trees in eternal competition for sunlight. In a sense, this delta is a vast organic filter that serves as the largest water purification system in Europe.

Haven for Animal Life

Millions of birds of more than 300 species flock to this avian paradise. About half the world’s white pelicans and over 60 percent of the world’s pygmy cormorants breed within the Danube Delta. Also, nearly all of the world’s red-breasted geese​—a globally threatened species—​spend the winter here. In March, pelicans build their nests and lay their eggs on remote floating islands of reeds. When autumn arrives, the pelicans depart for the Nile Delta, Greece, and Asian coasts as distant as India.

The birds are drawn back to the Danube Delta not only by the ideal habitat but also by the fish. More than 90 species of fish thrive in the delta’s channels. In fact, half of all the freshwater fish consumed in Romania come from the Danube Delta. Among the most famous delta fish is the sturgeon, which makes its way up the Danube in breeding season to lay its eggs. These eggs, otherwise known as caviar, are a prized and expensive delicacy.

There is little actual land here​—only 13 percent of the delta region rises above the waters. Here wolves, foxes, hare, and muskrat eke out a living. Such endangered species as the freshwater otter and the European mink​—once a favorite of fashionable ladies—​also survive in the delta. In addition, over 1,800 species of insects buzz and crawl across this aquatic wonderland.

A Biosphere Worth Preserving

In 1991 the Danube Delta was inscribed on the World Heritage List. The following year it received international recognition as a biosphere reservation. The reserve is carefully managed from the city of Tulcea. Fishing is officially controlled, although poaching remains a constant threat.

Even so, the health of the delta is at the mercy of the cities and industrial centers that spew effluent into the Danube along its 1,770-mile [2,850 km] journey to the sea. In years past a network of wet grasslands filtered the lower Danube before its waters entered the delta. Now, nearly four fifths of those grasslands have disappeared.

Today the delta itself is expanding into the Black Sea by as much as a hundred feet a year. And the Danube, just as it has for thousands of years, continues to build, renovate, and refresh this landscape of striking contrasts.

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UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

ROMANIA

Bucharest

Danube Delta

BLACK SEA

Danube River

BULGARIA

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The delta’s reed bed, one of the world’s largest, provides refuge for wildlife of all kinds

[Picture on page 24]

Muskrat

[Pictures on page 25]

About half the world’s white pelicans breed here

[Picture on page 26]

More than 300 species of birds flock to this avian paradise, including kingfishers

[Pictures on page 26]

Over 1,800 species of insects are found in the Danube Delta

[Picture Credit Line on page 24]

All photos: Silviu Matei

[Picture Credit Line on page 25]

All photos: Silviu Matei

[Picture Credit Line on page 26]

All photos: Silviu Matei