Ecological Counseling Center Cahul

Ecological Counseling Center Cahul Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Ecological Counseling Center Cahul, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), A. Mateevici nr 21, Cahul.

Founded in March 1999 the Public Association Ecological Counseling Center Cahul (ECC Cahul) is a non-governmental, non-profit, and non-political organization located in Cahul, Republic of Moldova.

20/08/2026

A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Marine Science — examining the stomach contents of Beluga, Russian and Stellate sturgeons bycaught in the northwestern Black Sea — has produced findings with direct consequences for how we understand the threat that benthic habitat degradation poses to sturgeon recovery.

Analysis of stomach contents revealed that bivalves represent the dominant food group for large-sized sturgeon species — Beluga and Russian sturgeon — while polychaetes are essential for the smaller Stellate sturgeon. Fish and crustaceans are present in the food spectrum of all three species.

This dietary profile defines the ecological requirements of the Black Sea marine phase of the sturgeon life cycle with unusual precision. Sturgeons are obligate benthic feeders in the sea. They forage on the shallow coastal shelf and in the estuarine zones around the Danube delta — areas characterised by soft sediments, rich invertebrate communities and the benthic productivity that underpins the entire food chain in northwestern Black Sea coastal waters.

Eutrophication remains a persistent challenge in Black Sea coastal waters. Excessive nutrient inputs — from agricultural runoff and the Danube itself, which delivers approximately 30% of the sea's external nutrient load — have caused the decline of Phyllophora algae fields, which historically provided important habitat for juvenile and bottom-dwelling fish. The same eutrophication events that reduce oxygen levels in bottom waters and create seasonal hypoxic zones directly affect the bivalve and polychaete populations that constitute the primary diet of adult sturgeons.

The connection is direct and measurable: periods of severe Black Sea eutrophication correlate with periods of reduced sturgeon body condition and reproductive success in the historical record. The partial recovery of Black Sea eutrophication since the 1990s — driven by reduced fertiliser use following the collapse of Soviet-era agriculture — provided a measurable improvement in benthic community health. That recovery is now under pressure from renewed agricultural intensification and from the wartime disruption of Ukrainian river basin management.

For SturNet, this research reinforces a fundamental principle: sturgeon conservation cannot be pursued in the river corridor alone. The dietary ecology of adult and subadult sturgeons in the Black Sea means that benthic habitat quality in Bulgarian and Romanian coastal waters is as important to population recovery as spawning habitat in the Danube. The two systems are one.

Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.foundation

04/08/2026

📢 Call for Papers | International Scientific Conference
project CARE SEA invites researchers, higher education and research institutions, public authorities, environmental practitioners, policy-makers, civil society organisations, students, local communities, and all stakeholders working towards a cleaner Black Sea to submit their contributions to the International Scientific Conference "Transboundary Science for a Cleaner and Sustainable Black Sea."
🌍 Conference themes include:
• Pollution monitoring and integrated environmental assessment
• Environmental modelling, smart observation and data integration
• Transboundary rivers, wetlands and coastal ecosystems
• Climate change, ecosystem health, biodiversity conservation and ecological rehabilitation
• Citizen science, environmental education and public engagement
• Environmental governance, knowledge transfer and future cooperation
• Climate change adaptation
📅 Important dates
• 10 August 2026 – Abstract submission deadline
• 25 August 2026 – Abstract acceptance notification
• 5 September 2026 – Full paper submission
• 22–24 September 2026 – Conference
📍 Venue: Batumi S***a Rustaveli State University, Batumi, Georgia.
Find the full Call for Papers and submission details 👉 bit.ly/3TAQ4Bz

03/08/2026

SturNet Newsletter No. 5 is now available.

This edition highlights recent progress across the Black Sea Basin, including sturgeon conservation activities, scientific monitoring, stakeholder engagement and awareness-raising initiatives.

Read the latest project updates and learn how the SturNet partnership is strengthening regional cooperation for the protection of endangered sturgeon species and their habitats.

Read the newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/892df3a7c1a8/sturnet-news-13372502

21/07/2026

Protecting sturgeon requires coordinated action across borders. The MonStur initiative is helping make that possible by bringing together partners from nine Danube countries to establish the first shared monitoring system for wild sturgeon populations.

By improving data collection and harmonising monitoring methods, the project will strengthen conservation efforts, support evidence based decision making, and contribute to the implementation of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region and the Pan European Action Plan for Sturgeons.

For projects such as SturNet, initiatives like MonStur demonstrate the value of regional cooperation in protecting one of Europe’s most endangered fish groups and improving the long term health of the Danube and Black Sea ecosystems.

Learn more:

https://www.wwf.eu/

https://danube-region.eu/

21/07/2026

Danube sturgeons are not river fish. They are creatures of two worlds — and they need both to survive.
All five sturgeon species native to the Danube basin are anadromous: they hatch in the river's freshwater, migrate to the Black Sea to feed and mature over years and sometimes decades, then return upstream to spawn. The Beluga sturgeon — one of the largest freshwater fish on Earth — may spend up to 20 years at sea before making its first return journey. The Russian sturgeon, the Stellate sturgeon, the Sterlet and the Ship sturgeon all follow versions of this same ancient cycle.
That cycle depends entirely on one thing: an unbroken ecological corridor from the upper Danube to the Black Sea.
Two centuries of dam construction, river regulation and floodplain drainage have fractured that corridor severely. Eighty percent of the Danube's former floodplains have been lost. Dams block migration routes at critical points. Spawning grounds built up from gravel beds over millennia have been buried under silt or simply removed. The sturgeons that remain in the wild are the last survivors of populations that once numbered in the millions.
This is why floodplain restoration projects like the award-winning LIFE Danube Floodplains — which recovered over 1,800 hectares of habitat in Slovakia and Hungary — are directly relevant to sturgeon survival, not just to biodiversity in the abstract. Restored river branches provide juvenile feeding habitat. Reconstructed water management structures restore the natural flow regimes that maintain the gravels sturgeons need for spawning. Every kilometre of river returned to functioning ecological condition is a kilometre of corridor reopened.
The sturgeons that once defined both the Danube and the Black Sea have not disappeared yet. But the window to act is measured in years, not decades.
Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.bg

21/07/2026

There is a sentence in the latest WWF analysis of sturgeon crime in the Lower Danube that deserves to be read carefully: the documented figures represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Between 2016 and 2023, authorities in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine recorded 395 confirmed cases of illegal sturgeon fishing and trade, involving over 1,000 individual fish. Of those, 144 cases were recorded in Bulgaria and 157 in Romania. And yet WWF is explicit that the real scale of poaching goes largely undetected. Most illegal activity happens at night, on stretches of river that cannot be adequately patrolled.
In Bulgaria alone, authorities seized 988 illegal hook lines — the traditional karmaci — adding up to more than 37 kilometres in length. One third of sturgeon products sampled in a market survey across four countries were found to be illegal, either sourced from wild-caught fish or sold in violation of CITES and EU trade regulations.
What makes these numbers so alarming from a biological standpoint is what they represent in terms of population recovery. Sturgeons are among the slowest-reproducing vertebrates on Earth. A Beluga sturgeon may not reach reproductive maturity for 15 to 25 years. The Beluga, Russian sturgeon and Stellate sturgeon are all Critically Endangered. The Ship sturgeon has been declared extinct in the Danube as of 2022.
Hatchery restocking programmes, habitat restoration, and fishing bans are all essential — but none of them can outpace the removal of reproductively active adults through poaching. Enforcement is not a side issue in sturgeon conservation. It is the central one.
Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.bg

21/07/2026

Eleven Cinereous Vultures have just made the journey from Extremadura, Spain to Bulgaria. This week's news from the Bearded Vulture LIFE project is a reminder that restoring lost species to the Balkans requires not just local effort — but a continent-wide network of cooperation.
For SturNet, that parallel is not incidental. The logic that applies to vultures applies directly to sturgeons.
Sturgeons need to migrate between rivers and seas. They cross many EU national borders during their lives, making them a flagship species for free-flowing rivers and healthy marine ecosystems. Sturgeon recovery cannot be achieved by single countries — it is a true European responsibility.
Almost all sturgeon species are diadromous fish that regularly migrate between marine and freshwater habitats. They are gametic migrants — mature adults migrate for the purpose of spawning, and their life cycle is adapted according to this reciprocal migration between sea and freshwater. The Lower Danube is the last stretch of river in Europe where this cycle still occurs for four species. It connects directly to the north-western Black Sea — the marine feeding ground where juvenile sturgeons spend years before making the return journey to spawn.
What makes the situation so precarious is the combination of pressures acting simultaneously: the Iron Gate dams block upstream migration; habitat degradation from dredging and river engineering removes spawning grounds; and illegal fishing removes reproductively active adults faster than populations can recover.
The World Sturgeon Conservation Society and conservation partners have developed recommendations for conservation hatcheries and breeding programmes — but these are described explicitly as a last resort measure, one that must be based on scientific guidance and implemented coherently across the entire river basin.
Restocking alone cannot save Danube sturgeons. Only the restoration of the full ecological system — free-flowing river sections, intact spawning habitat, enforced fishing bans, and community alternatives — can offer a genuine path to recovery.
Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.bg

21/07/2026

Bulgaria made a decision that matters: the permanent, indefinite ban on fishing for all sturgeon species in the Bulgarian section of the Danube River and the Black Sea entered into force.
Until this point, Bulgaria had maintained a fishing ban since 2011 — but it was renewed periodically, in temporary five-year or annual orders. The new order, signed by the Minister of Environment and Water and the Minister of Agriculture and Food, removes that uncertainty. The ban now remains in force until the conservation status of sturgeon species reaches a sustainable favourable level across all countries sharing their populations.
Four species are covered: the Beluga, the Russian sturgeon, the Stellate sturgeon and the Sterlet — all critically endangered, with the exception of the Sterlet which is listed as endangered. Two species — the German sturgeon and the Ship sturgeon — have already disappeared from the Danube and from Bulgaria entirely.
What makes this development significant is not just the legal permanence. It also introduces a new requirement for fishermen to report sturgeon bycatch and release it immediately, regardless of the fish's condition. Bycatch — accidental capture in gear set for other species — has long been an underestimated threat because the data was almost impossible to gather. This change creates a legal reporting obligation that should, over time, give scientists and authorities a clearer picture of how often sturgeons are encountering fishing gear in Bulgarian waters.
WWF-Bulgaria, which has released nearly 100,000 tagged juvenile sturgeons into the Danube to date as part of restocking programmes, notes that it is still too early to assess the full impact of the permanent ban. Recovery will take decades — the long life cycles and late sexual maturity of sturgeons mean that the effects of any protection measure unfold over generations, not years. But a permanent legal framework is the foundation on which everything else depends.
Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.bg

21/07/2026

The war in the Black Sea is not a background condition for sturgeon conservation. It is an active threat to the marine phase of the sturgeon life cycle — and understanding that connection is essential for anyone working on the long-term recovery of Danube sturgeon populations.
Sturgeons are anadromous fish. They hatch in the Danube, spend years in the Black Sea feeding and maturing, then return to the river to spawn. The north-western Black Sea — particularly the shallow shelf areas off the coasts of Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria — is not merely adjacent to their migration route. It is where they grow. It is where they accumulate the body mass and reproductive energy that determines whether a spawning migration succeeds.
What is happening in that sea right now is severe. Ukrainian marine scientists estimate over 100,000 dolphin deaths since the full-scale invasion began — a figure that indicates profound ecosystem disruption across the upper food web. Military sonar, underwater explosions, chemical contamination and drastically reduced fisheries activity in Ukrainian waters have altered the acoustic, chemical and biological environment of the sea across a wide area. Naval mines carried by the Black Sea's counter-clockwise currents have reached Bulgarian and Romanian waters.
Sturgeons — already critically endangered, already subject to poaching pressure, already facing habitat fragmentation from dams — are now maturing in a marine ecosystem under extraordinary additional stress. The cumulative pressure is not additive. It is multiplicative.
WWF's ongoing work in the Lower Danube addresses the river corridor: habitat research, anti-poaching enforcement, restocking of juvenile fish, and the development of a floating gene bank hatchery with partners across multiple countries. Bulgaria's permanent fishing ban, in force since January 2026, removes one direct threat vector. The designated "Sturgeons — Vetren" protected area establishes a legal framework for habitat management.
But the recovery of Danube sturgeons cannot be secured from the river alone. It requires the Black Sea feeding grounds to remain functional. That means Bulgaria, as a Black Sea coastal state, has a direct stake in the marine environmental governance of this conflict — not only as a matter of conservation values, but as a matter of scientific necessity for the species SturNet exists to protect.
Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.bg

21/07/2026

One of the most ambitious sturgeon conservation programmes ever undertaken in Europe — has set itself a target of releasing 1.6 million juvenile sturgeons into the Danube by 2030. The science behind that number, and the conditions required for it to mean anything, are worth understanding.
The project is built on a critical recognition: wild sturgeon populations in the Danube have collapsed to the point where natural reproduction alone cannot sustain them. Most Russian sturgeon individuals now recorded in the river originate from hatchery stocking rather than wild breeding. Genetic diversity is declining. The population of reproductively active adults — the individuals that actually determine whether the species can recover — is too small and too scattered to maintain itself without intervention.
The project's response is structured around six conservation measures running from 2022 to 2030. Its centrepiece is a floating hatchery established in Vienna — the LIFE-Boat — which keeps and reproduces wild broodstock and rears juvenile fish in conditions designed to preserve the genetic diversity of Danube-origin sturgeons. A parallel facility is being built along the Körös river in Hungary. The partners span BOKU University in Vienna, viadonau, the City of Vienna, and conservation teams in Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
A recent release of 1,000 juvenile fish — 500 Russian sturgeon and 500 Stellate sturgeon — each carrying individual identification tags, illustrates what this work looks like in practice. Every fish released is a data point. Scientists track survival, movement and migration to build a clearer picture of where the river supports juvenile sturgeons and where the threats are highest. The goal is not simply to add fish to the water — it is to understand what those fish experience between release and the moment they might return as reproductively active adults, years or decades later.
What makes this approach scientifically credible is its explicit acknowledgement of what restocking cannot do. It cannot compensate for the continued removal of reproductively active adults through poaching. It cannot restore spawning habitat destroyed by dredging and river engineering. And it cannot substitute for the free-flowing river connectivity that sturgeons need to complete their life cycle. The hatchery programme is a bridge — buying time while the conditions for genuine wild recovery are rebuilt.
The 1.6 million fish by 2030 target is ambitious. Whether it translates into population recovery depends on decisions being made right now: about fishing bans, habitat protection, dam management, and the health of the Black Sea ecosystem the fish will eventually enter.
Learn more: https://www.biodiversity.foundation

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