RiverWatch and EuroNatur invited river enthusiasts and conservationists to come to the Balkan Rivers Conference, which took place from 25th – 27th of September in Belgrade. In total 120 people from 18 countries followed their invitation and took the opportunity to discuss how to stop the “dam tsunami” in the Balkans, as well as in other European regions. More than 2,700 hydropower plants are projected between Slovenia and Albania. Even national parks and other protected areas are at risk. Also within the planned Transboundary Biosphere Reserve “Mura-Drava-Danube” this threat is very real: there are plans build 8 hydropower plants onto theSlovenian Mura, which would destroy the entire free-flowing stection of the Slovenian Mura, converting it into a chain of reservoirs.

There were a lot of familiar faces at the conference, people who spent their whole life fighting against dams, but not just seasoned conservationists took part in the conference, also a lot of "new" people took part. The background of participants was also very varied: in addition to many NGOs from various countries, also fly fishermen, kayakers and students joined the event.

At the conference, participants had the chance to present their stories and their struggles to preserve their rivers and also successfully completed campaigns were presented. The program was furthermore rounded up by the presentation of the film "Damnation", which impressively shows that dams do not have to be forever, but there is always hope for river restoration and renaturation.

The last afternoon of the conference was filled with a brainstorming session that gave participants to exchange information and look for good, strategic solutions for their future work and judging by the numbers mentioned above, a good strategy will indeed be needed to save our rivers from further dams! After a successful two-day meeting, participants could then join in a river boat tour on Sunday morning on Sava and Danube, which proved to be the perfect ending to a very successful conference.