The association Schwemmland and the gfk invited Thomas Friedrich to participate at GOD – Garden of Disturbia in the industrial area of the harbor in Linz. The talk dealt which disturbances sturgeons have to face these days. Link: http://schwemmland.net/2019/02/god-garden-of-disturbia/
The Renature Festival took place in the floodplains of the Morava River and was also the final event of the LIFE Marchauen project. We released some of our sterlets, had a tank with some specimen at the festival to show the diversity and focus on the conservation of the sterlet in the Upper Danube and its tributaries.
We were also part of this year’s Donauinselfest, one of the biggest open air festivals in Europe, which is on top free of charge. We installed a tank with sterlets at the pavilion of the VÖAFV and “Hank”, a stuffed sturgeon, was residing at the pavilion of the MA45.
The annual Danube Day in the city park was a great success this year. Over 1000 children attended the event to learn more about water and especially the Danube as a habitat. We were there with an aquarium and information material for the whole day and gave tomorrow’s scientists an insight into the world under the water surface.
We do have regular visits at our hatching station from different interest groups.
School classes visit us regularly and we are always very happy to host and show them around. To get in contact with the sterlets is quite important in communicating also our project goals. In the last days we had the High School of Oberdöbling and the primary school from Donaustadt visiting us.
Screening of the movie Artifishal in Vienna’s Topkino and an audience discussion afterwards. Thomas Friedrich was part of the panel and we were happy to see the growing interest in sustainable fishery methods, the screening was sold out.
Besides field visits of our station on the Danube island we also travel to present our project to interested groups. As part of the Young Scientist Ambassador program we were invited to hold a presentation at the BORG Deutsch-Wagram. The students are in the last year before graduation and it was of special interest to them to find out more about our daily work routines and what kind of education you need to do projects like ours.
The visit of water experts from all over Austria on the Danube island was a very interesting encounter. Due to the fields of specialization of the group members we had very engaging discussions and reinforced our wish to visit the diversity of Austrian water bodies.