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Today the contradictions between man and nature are acquiring a dramatic character.
The ecological situation in our region is dangerous. However, in recent years it has come under great pressure
from agric-industrial developments in the catchments. Water pollution from point and diffuse sources is severe;
water regulation has altered the hydrological regime of the river; plant and animal species, including the
economically important sturgeon, are threatened; the delta is accreting due to increased transport of eroded
soil from the steppe farmlands; and the fore-delta is subject to erosion and submergence by rising water-levels
in the Caspian Sea.
With this competing pressures on the water in the Volga River it has become increasingly
difficult to balance economic and environment management goals.
The delicate Volga ecosystem has been visited by nearly every
imaginable environmental problem, including non-stop run-off of
untreated sewage, misguided farm policies that brought a flood of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the invasion of the floating
azoles plant (imported from the Far East), and a sharp drop in seasonal
bird populations.
Over the past two decades, chemical pollution and poaching have contributed to a steep decline in sturgeon, the fish
whose unfertilized eggs, the caviar, constitute another lucrative but dwindling Caspian resource.
"Try to help - it's you world".
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