A post by Nina Trdan, Chiara Gasperini, Soraya Negri and Clara Körner
Leaving the motorway and entering the city of Koper, you find yourself in the heart of an urban coastal area, with offices and shopping centres on one side and the port of Koper on the other. Looking around, it is hard to imagine that a Natura 2000 conservation site is only a few metres away. Nevertheless, the doors of Škocjanski zatok open and Bojana greets you with open arms and a warm smile, enthusiastically introducing you to the work she and her colleagues do before you even have a chance to say hello.
Škocjanski zatok is the largest brackish wetland in Slovenia, consisting of wet meadows, mudflats, reed beds and freshwater marshes. Coastal wetlands are a rarity along Slovenia’s short coastline and therefore represent a sanctuary for a wealth of species, including 60% of all bird species observed in Slovenia and many halophyte plants that are uniquely adapted to the environment [1] (Fig. 1).
But the 122-hectare nature reserve hasn’t always been a paradise for birds. Walking along the two-kilometre-long nature trail, Bojana tells the story of this seemingly wild and peaceful wetland lagoon: Once upon a time there was an island called Koper, surrounded by salt flats and farmland. The shallow bay next to it was filled with seawater and two rivers flowed into it [2]. Despite the great anthropogenic influence, the place was full of special fauna. In the 1960s, the city of Koper began to expand, and the construction of the Port of Koper began. 200,000 tonnes of silt and mud were pumped from the sea into the lagoon to deepen the bay for large ships. The area was declared a dumping ground, and many locals dumped building materials and household appliances there. The future of the once vibrant ecosystem seemed bleak. The complete destruction of the site was on the horizon when the Koper Municipality proposed the construction of a steel industry in the 1980s.
However, the tide turned, and a citizens’ initiative was launched to stop the construction. Although successful, the marsh was still more or less destroyed, with only a few species remaining in the area. The real heroes began their work in 1992, Bojana and other ecologists from DOPPS – BirdLife Slovenia, a Slovenian nature conservation organisation, who managed to change the legislation and put the site on the list of important nature conservation sites. Their work from 2006 to 2008 included cleaning the lagoon, removing all the rubbish and polluted silt, improving the flow of the rivers and creating living habitats for the birds.
Looking at the site today, it is hard to imagine the amount of work and manual labour that went into creating it. In just a few years, the lagoon is once again teeming with wildlife, including over 200 species of birds, amphibians and fish. Today it is also home to a few Camargue horses and Old Istrian cattle, which help manage the land with extensive grazing (Fig. 2).
Bojana’s stories of DOPP’s efforts and dedication are all that remain of the pre-restoration era. She and her team are living proof that with the right vision and determination, there is always hope that things can change for the better. If there’s one thing she could share with the world, it’s to never give up and always stay positive. If we just give it a chance, nature can change, and we can change with it.
This blog post was written as part of the “Agrobiodiversity Summer School” in Slovenia in August 2024, as a cooperation project between the ZHAW Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland (FiBL) and the Biotechnical Faculty of University of Ljubljana nd is supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland.
References
- Društvo za opazovanje in proučevanje ptic Slovenija (DOPPS). (2007). Obnova in ohranjanje habitatov in ptic v naravnem rezervatu Škocjanski zatok. Ministrstvo RS za okolje in prostor. ↩︎
- Brakična življenjska okolja. (n.d.). Naravni Rezervat Škocjanski Zatok. https://www.skocjanski-zatok.org/narava/brakicna-zivljenjska-okolja/ ↩︎