Nine years of work brought the Danube's floodplains back to life — and won Europe's top nature prize

The LIFE Danube floodplains project spent nine years re-wetting old river branches in Slovakia and Hungary, undoing two centuries of dams and drainage. Herons, storks, and white-tailed eagles returned; native forests replaced invasive species. It just won the Nature & Biodiversity prize at the LIFE Awards 2026.