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GRIGORE ANTIPA AND THE PROBLEMS OF THE DANUBE – ALWAYS CONTEMPORARY


ĹžTEFAN NEGREA, ALEXANDRINA NEGREA

Issue:

SCSB, Volume X

Section:

Introduction

Abstract:

When we mention Grigore Antipa, we remember the known museum from Bucharest, PiaĂľa Victoriei, named after him even when he was alive. It represents, without any doubt, a significant achievement, most dear to him, but not the sole one. We should not forget he was also the initiator of the Romanian hydrobiology and ichtiology and the one who structured, on scientific bases, the State Fisheries. Prolific scientist and a brilliant mind, with a rich and many-sided biological and economical activity, a master in the art of combining the theory with the practice, he fought like no one else for the revaluation of the riches from the waters of his country, mainly those of the Danube, the wide floodplains and the Delta of the old river.

Today, after 61 years after the passing in the shadows world of the scientist, turned into a fistful of ash in an urn kept in the museum he built, let us see what retained the posterity from his creations? It is true, in the first years after his disappearance, in March 1944, his written works was forgotten for a period. However, when the hydrobiologic – ichtiological study of the Danube and the Black Sea developed greatly in the fifties, he was rediscovered by the biologists and the ichtiologists. There was no other way: we are speaking about Grigore Antipa described by C. Motaº, his successor at the helm of the Museum, in 1961 with the words: “Who, in this country can name himself a hydrobilogist, an ichtiologist and was not, directly or indirectly, his disciple, who walked on the road opened by him and was not following the program he designed?” Through a serious study of his works, they drew research plans based on the ideas and the ecological programs of the famous predecessor. The collective from the Institute of Piscicultural Research led by a successor of Antipa, the famed biologist Mihai Bãcescu and the collective of the ecologist Professor Nicolae Botnariuc from the Faculty of Biology (the author of this paper was part of it) followed with determination in the footsteps of Antipa to extend the hydrobiologic –piscicultural studies: Bãcescu that of the Romanian waters of the Black Sea and Botnariuc that of some lacustrine complexes from the floodplain and the Danube Delta. As we shall see further on, the results of their researches, that strengthened Antipa’s conclusions regarding the “flooded region of the Danube” were not taken into consideration by the leaders of our country in the ’70 – ’80. As a result, this important wet zone of Europe was nearly wiped out from the map and the consequences did not wait long to manifest themselves…

Keywords:

Grigore Antipa, Flooded region and Danube Delta, Ecological protection and reconstruction.

Code [ID]:

SCSB200510V10S03A0001 [0002540]


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