RIVER REHABILITATION: A NEWAPPROACH TO THE DESIGN OF FISHPASSES THROUGH DAMS

摘要

Ecosystems of most European rivers were significantly altered by human activitythroughout the 20th century with the aim of facilitating economic development and settle-ment protection. The ecosystem needs and environmental flow requirements wereneglected, which resulted in river ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. As a rule,river rehabilitation programs are costly and complicated processes. While aiming at overallriver ecosystem rehabilitation, recently initiated restoration programs should take intoaccount regional peculiarities and specificities. One of the relatively cheap and easy tech-nologies to deal with some aspects of river rehabilitation and securing environmental flowneeds is suggested. It is based on restoration of the migration routes for the most sensitiveand vulnerable river basin species: migratory fish, such as sturgeons. The existing fishpassing facilities in South Russia are inefficient and require urgent replacement. The pro-posed technologies for fish passage through the dams and barrier complexes are based onthe -non-forced" principle, unlike the predominant 20th century approach to fish transfer.