Hungarian Online Resources

est. 1993 by UMCP Hungarian American Student Association

Public Support Needed: Photos of the Szigetköz Catastrophe

Public Support Needed To Save Danube Wetlands
Photos of the construction and the resulting environmental
catastrophe.

In order to present a high quality image the
photographs are large.
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In Hungarian
“sziget” means island. Szigetkoz refers to the series of islands that once
made up this ancient and beautiful ecosystem. Since there is no more
water, there are no more islands.

The Szigetkoz wetland region has dried up, the fish have died out, the
fishing birds have left and the vegetation, which survived since the last
Ice Age, is dying. The rerouting of the river into a concrete sealed canal
has cut out the “lung of the river.” As a result, the water’s dissolved
oxygen content has plummeted and consequently, the river is no longer able
to digest the sewage, which is dumped into the Danube at Bratislava and
Budapest.