Chainsaws on the rampage

River paradise has now been brutally “mutilated”

Veteran biologist Dr. Erhard Kraus is horrified.(Bild: Franz Crepaz)

In the middle of the European nature reserve on the River Mank in the district of Melk, chainsaws and heavy axes are now raging - conservationists are outraged! But the head of the village defends the measures.

Kingfishers, brown trout and many other helpless creatures were presumably in a state of wild flight when the logging crews arrived at St. Leonhard am Forst and felled ancient giant trees with stumps and stems as if they were just sticks from the Chinese around the corner.

Activists locate "environmental atrocity" 
Outraged, Dr. Erhard Kraus, deputy chairman of the "Lanius Research Association", rushed to the site of the willow slaughter. Presumably, neither the landowner, the Republic of Austria, nor the Lower Austrian hydraulic engineering department and certainly not the fisheries department had given their consent. "This devastation in the European nature reserve - in the middle of the riverbed, among other places - is ecologically irresponsible and would also have required a permit under nature conservation law," criticizes Kraus. A fellow campaigner shouts his anger at the "environmental atrocity" even louder and more clearly into the quiet floodplain: "This is wood theft by the woodchip mafia!"

During the clearing, of all times, heavy machinery was used to clear the area during the trout spawning season.

„Lanius“-Aktivist Dr. Erhard Kraus

Blockages after floods 
The head of the village, Hans-Jürgen Resel, who has been made responsible and threatened with legal action, does not understand the uproar: "We have to remove blockages and deadwood after the flood. If I don't avert these dangers with a view to further floods, I won't have one foot in the water, but in crime."