BRT5 | Sava: Bohinj to Belgrade
April 24th – June 1st 2020
WE NEED YOUR IDEAS + ACTION
39 days. 4 countries. 1.000km of kayaking. 1 River. The Sava.
Our crazy BRD crew will kayak the entire length of the Sava River. Joined along the way by people that understand the importance of wild rivers, we will spend 39 days and 1.000 km in our kayaks using only paddles to get us from the source in the Julian Alps of Slovenia to the confluence with Danube in the white city of Belgrade, Serbia.
During the 39 days of kayaking (from April 24th till June 1st) we will bring together locals, nature conservation organizations, kayakers, fishermen, schools, media outlets and decision makers to show how incredible and important the Sava catchment is for wildlife and local residents and how foolish it would be to destroy all that with new dams, destructive gravel extraction and dredging.
BECOME PART OF THE BRT5 TEAM + PLAN YOUR OWN BRT5 RIVER ACTION
It is time to prove the fight for rivers in the Balkans is more than a project, it is a movement!
Ready to take action and get involved in the fight for wild rivers? You already fight for rivers and would just like to join forces for this event? Plan your own River Action and become a part of the tour!
It can be a kayaking trip, a bike trip or a hiking trip along a tributary. Or maybe you have a citizen science project with your school. A garbage clean up and a football game! A protest and a picnic! An art installment or day of painting. Any combination works, as long as it’s for a river, on a river of the Sava catchment!
Check the River Actions page for details!
COME PADDLE WITH US!
We are inviting you to paddle the Sava with us for the first and the last stage of the BRT5 program. Become part of the BRT5 team and paddle the smaller stretches of river with simple logistics, and more manageable paddling for recreation paddlers. Full program for those days can be found and downloaded here. The middle stages (2&3) of BRT5 will entail long days of fast paddling, where the team will cover 45+ km of flat water every day, sleeping on the river banks with limited support. When we paddle through towns and cities everyone is welcome to join, but the exhausting long days are for the BRT5 team only.
WHY THE SAVA NEEDS HELP?
- With 9 existing (highly destructive) hydro power plants on Sava river in Slovenia, there are plans for as many as 14 new HPPs in Slovenia and Croatia
- The creation of a channel cutting a corner out of the Sava to connect it to the Danube in Croatia.
- Many other industrial activities like dredging for navigation and gravel extraction threaten and damage the river and could ultimately kill one of the last corridors for wildlife in Europe.
- More than 500 new HPPs planned throughout the Sava catchment, on tributaries that feed this rich river.
