The Christmas concert relayed from Vienna is now a part of the lives of many of us. The Blue Danube does not become hackneyed, even though you wonder how often that river appears blue. Well, on a sunny day of blue skies, the blue could be reflected onto the river as to any surface of water. It's some river, the Danube, from its source in southern Germany where two streams, the Breg and the Brigach, come together to form the Donau, as it is in German. It crosses or skirts eight states and three capitals and is the second longest river in Europe at 1792 miles (the Volga, at 2,292 miles, is the longest). Pleasure cruisers offer holidays on many European rivers, the Rhine perhaps being the most frequented. How will the Danube be seen as a tourist delight this year? For, long long after being bombed, in the Kosovo conflict, factories were still, a month or so ago, leaking toxic chemicals into the river, and may still be doing so. These were industrial factories on the river banks in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A Vienna-based director of the World Wildlife Federation said that highly toxic chemicals were being dispersed throughout the lower Danube system and even into the Black Sea. "We believe that whoever is responsible for the pollution should clean it up."
And a Finn, who led a United Nations assessment of the war's environmental impact, said that the damage required urgent attention and should be treated as a humanitarian issue. And the UN team said it was concerned about the impact of munitions tipped with depleted uranium warheads used by NATO. A petrochemical complex northwest of Belgrade, an oil refinery south of that city and other installations bombed, mean that water on which 10 million people depend for drinking in Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine is contaminated. These waters also supported fisheries. And then, in the delta at the Black Sea, a miracle of bird life with 320 species, many of them breeding in its reed-beds. How long can poisons lie in the bed of a river? After the second World War, how long did it take for the Rhine, for example, to return to something like normality, if it ever did? For did we not in recent years send some salmon to help them reinvigorate the fish life of the Rhine? It's a gloomy time, after New Year. No wonder the heading over the article from which this is taken (BBC Wildlife, December) is headed, rather heavy-footedly perhaps, "Danube Feels The Blues." Y