Yesterday, September 24 2025, the Austrian freshwater ecologist Prof. Dr. Fritz Schiemer, Chair of Riverwatch, has been awarded the Wolfgang Staab Nature Conservation Award 2025, endowed with €20,000, by the Schweisfurth Stiftung. The prize recognizes his exceptional scientific and political commitment to protecting the Vjosa River in Albania

Two years after its landmark designation in March 2023 as Europe’s first Wild River National Park, the Vjosa River is under continuous pressure from extractive industries, infrastructure expansion, and mismanaged development, putting the park’s ecological integrity and its global conservation value at risk.

The Serbian organisation for political ecology, Polekol, has submitted a complaint to the Bern Convention, warning that the construction of the small hydroelectric power plant Gradina on the Studenica River will jeopardise protected habitats and species of international significance.