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Biological Significance

Consevation Threats

WWF Involvement in Latvia

Achievements

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conservation threats


Grey seal with mackerel Fifty years of Soviet rule had both positive and negative repercussions for Latvia from an environmental point of view. Under the Communists, all land was state-owned and large areas were depopulated, leaving much of the countryside untouched for many years. This has left a legacy of ecosystems that are relatively unspoilt by European standards. However, since independence, changes in land-tenure have often been accompanied by a complete lack of restriction on land use. Land privatization, intensification of agriculture and forestry, and the growth of tourism all pose threats to biodiversity. Latvia may be on the way to repeating mistakes already made by many western European countries.

Industrialization under the Soviets also left a legacy of polluted streams, air, and soils in and around urban areas. The capital, Riga, is an environmental black spot, as is the port of Ventspils, site of a huge petrochemical complex. A 1993 World Bank Report on Latvia's environment stated that more than 250,000 tons of hazardous industrial waste is generated each year in Riga and Liepaja, most of which is deposited in landfill sites that contaminate streams and groundwater.

The same practices that have destroyed biodiversity over huge areas elsewhere in northern Europe are endangering Latvia's forests. Wetlands and their swamp forests have been drained and forests are being cut down some by farmers needing quick financial return from their new smallholdings, others by logging companies. State policy requires that logged forests are replaced by monocultures of spruce. As elsewhere, there is a lack of awareness of sustainable forest practices and this is not helped by other outdated forestry regulations. For example, companies licensed to cut timber are required to remove all dead wood an important habitat for many insects, fungi, birds, and other species from their concession areas.

The Baltic Sea is especially vulnerable to pollution because it is shallow and almost surrounded by land. The threats facing the Baltic are well documented and over the years it has suffered a number of environmental insults: overfishing of cod and salmon; oil spills (both accidental and deliberate); pollution by heavy metals and pesticides; and eutrophication caused by an excess of nutrients washed down in river systems or directly from the land.

All this has taken a heavy toll on Baltic wildlife. Fish are unable to spawn in oxygen depleted waters, sea birds die in oil slicks, and the immune systems and reproductive capacity of mammals such as seals are depressed. Populations of ringed seal (Phoca hispida botnica) and grey seal (Halicoerus grypus) in the Baltic are down from 100,000 at the turn of the century to a just a few thousand today, while populations of the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) are now reduced to a few hundred individuals.