(13 Dec 2013) Daybreak on the Danube. Wildfowl can feed, swim and stretch their wings, in the early morning sun.
For much of its course from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Danube is constricted between concrete walls or uniform stone banks.
It flows through some 60 power stations and busy docks and 10 countries before it reaches the vast Danube Delta and flows into the Black Sea.
Yet for the last few hundred miles as it flows through Romania, much of the river is as nature designed it.
It is broad, lazy, broken up with shoals and islands where pelicans nest, its banks anchored by weeping willows that drip water even on sunny days.
The delta boasts one of the biggest pelican populations in Europe, which bird watchers can watch diving for fish in a feeding frenzy at dawn.
"The pelican is the symbol of the Danube Delta. We have more than 3,500 pairs here. They come here for nesting on those floating mud islands," says Dr. Viorel Cuzic, a bird researcher at Delta Museum in Tulcea.
"It's the ideal place for them to nest and raise their young as no one can bother them there, especially humans, who are the main disturbing factor for them" he adds.
Many species exotic to much of Europe reside or migrate here including the glossy ibis, the European roller, herons, swans and storks.
The massive bird population also made them vulnerable. Romania reported its first cases of H5N1 or bird flu in October 2005 in the Danube Delta, during the migrating season.
Hundreds of thousands of birds migrate every years from there and the area was virtually closed off during the bird flu scare.
According to the US State Department, the biosphere region of the Danube Delta provides crucial habitat for endangered species, vital nesting grounds for over 300 species of migratory birds and spawning grounds that support a vital herring fishery.
"The Danube delta, it is a blessed territory both thanked to the people that live there and to the beautiful things that happen there. This is why we have an administration of the biosphere reservation and special laws that rule the area. The Danube delta and the programs related to humans and the biosphere are very much appreciated by the UNESCO," says Lucretia Balutza, Expert with the UNESCO Romanian commission.
Mihai Baciu is a bird specialist and wildlife photographer.
He says that says the Danube delta is unique: " It is such a beautiful place. It attracts you with its birds, its nature, with everything it's here. It s a place that deserves to be shown to others. It's so rich in thousands of life forms like birds and animals. Places like this one, so beautiful, are so rare on earth it's really worth being here. "
Sturgeon have been around for 250 million years, making them among the world's oldest surviving fish species. They can live for up to a century and take a long time to reach maturity.
Archaeologists have found wooden sturgeon traps in the ruins of Roman fortresses behind the willow trees on the Danube's banks, along with sturgeon bones dated to the 3rd century.
In the 1970s and '80s Romania built giant dams across the Iron Gates gorge, cutting off half the sturgeons' spawning grounds.
Fishermen, unrestrained after the collapse of order in eastern Europe in 1989, caught them in huge numbers as they began their migration, trapping them before they could reproduce.
Pollution from agricultural run-off and expanding cities put them under further pressure, although the construction of water treatment plants in the last decade has lessened the flow of filth.
Laura Haralambie is a fish specialist at Tulcea Aquarium.
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