GRAIA

World Fish Migration Day and European Natura 2000 day

Stefania Trasforini — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 15:06:31 +0000

GRAIA will celebrate again the World Fish Migration Day (WFMD), a one day global-local event to create awareness on the importance of open rivers for migratory fish. This celebration will be aided by the important recurrence of the “European Natura 2000 day” which we are particularly linked, considering the number of projects we have been protagonists during the years.

We will actively participate to two events, the first open to everyone, will take place on April 29th 2018 at the Brusimpiano (VA) hatchery, the second dedicated to the students, will be on May 9th 2018 at the FIPSAS hatchery and the Porto della Torre fish passage in the Somma Lombardo (VA) municipality. Furthermore it will be the right opportunity to promote the active LIFE Programme projects (Life Conflupo and Life Ticino Biosource) to all the participants.

You can find all the events details on the link below:

Somma Lombardo (VA) event
Brusimpiano (VA) event

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Launched the Erasmus+ Project “WoW”

Stefania Trasforini — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 09:39:03 +0000

Graia during the three year period 2017 -2020 will be partner and leader of an important european project Written on Water 2017 “WoW”.

The Project, launched in September, falls within the area of the Erasmus plus project and represents an important tool and an opportunity to increase the education of the young students. WoW is a cooperation project between Italians, Polish and Croatian schools and research institutes focused on the natural aquatic ecosystems and aimed to improve the students professional skills and to innovate the educational practice in the schools.

Erasmus Plus is the European union program for the Education, the Training, the Youth and the Sport 2014-2020. The Program fits in a socio-economic contest that shows almost 6 millions of young European unemployed, with levels in some countries exceeding the 50%. Meanwhile there are more than 2 millions of vacant positions and one third of the employers report difficulties to hire personnel with the required qualifications. This shows the exist of important skills deficit in Europe.

Erasmus+ has been thought to give strong answers to this issues, with studying and training opportunities, work experiences or volunteering abroad. The quality and the pertinence of the organizations and of the educational European systems, training and assistance to the young will be increased with the support to the improvement of the teaching and learning methods, to new programs and to the professional develop of the teaching staff and of the youth entertainers, and with a major cooperation between the education and work world in order to face the real needs in terms of social and human capital development, in Europe and elsewhere.

For the first time the Program gives funding not only to the universities and to the education institutes, but even to innovative partnerships, the so-called “knowledge alliances” and “sector-based skills alliances“, that will build synergies between the education and work world allowing the high schools institutes, the teachers and the companies to encourage the innovation and the business spirit as well as the development of new programs and skills in order to fill the gaps. (Source: www.erasmusplus.it)

On November 6 and 7, 2017 in the Travedona Monate (VA) muncipality will take place the first technical meeting of the working group

The poster of the first meeting

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World Fish Migration Day

Stefania Trasforini — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 11:39:39 +0000

The World Fish Migration Day (WFMD) is a one day global-local event to create awareness on the importance of open rivers and migratory fish. The event is celebrated for the second time and GRAIA with the Parco Lombardo della Valle del Ticino, both involved in the Life Project “Con.Flu.Po”, will personally participate together with over 1000 organizations around the globe at the same time.

The event is part of the dissemination activities foreseen in the Life Project “Con.Flu.Po”, related to the Po River corridor rehabilitation.
The Life project is realizing a very important fish passage at the Isola Serafini Dam, the most important fluvial dam in Italy, on the Po River (it will be opened in 2017). The flag species of the Life project is the adriatic sturgeon (Acipenser naccarii), and the restocking activity is done by the Parco Lombardo della Valle del Ticino.
In two dates, May the 16 and the 25, two different schools of the Park will be involved in the restocking activities, and the students will directly release the fishes in the river. It will be the perfect moment to describe the WFMD, and to explain the Park projects in the river connections (fish passes).

World Fish Migration Day website

Parco Lombardo della Valle del Ticino website

Life Project “Con.Flu.Po” website

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First images of the Videomonitoring in the fish passages

Stefania Trasforini — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 13:21:55 +0000

The personnel of GRAIA is currently engaged in multiple tasks with the Life Project “Con.Flu.Po” (Life11nat/it/188) and this video shows some frames collected in the sphere of the Action D.1 of the Project.

The Action D.1 deals with the verification of the fish migrations restoring through a network of active fish passages, of which the fish passage currently under construction, near by the Isola Serafini Dam, will be part (Monticelli d’ongina, Piacenza, Lombardy, Italy).

This Action started July 1st, 2013 and today takes into account the monitoring of four fish passages, two of these are on the Ticino River and the other two are on the Tresa River. The two fish passes on the Ticino are located near by the Panperduto Dam and Porto della Torre Dam, both in the municipality of Somma Lombardo (Varese, Lombardy, Italy); the two fish passages, on the Tresa River, are located near by the Creva Dam, in the municipality of Luino (Varese, Lombardy, Italy), and beside the dam, which regulates the water levels of Lake Lugano, in the municipality of Lavena Ponte Tresa (Varese, Lombardy, Italy). The fish passages are all equipped with a monitoring room, inside this room there are windows which allows to observe the fish transiting in the fishway. Furthermore, the rooms are furnished with a video-monitoring system which enables to record the fish transiting and to obtain high quality images as the ones presented in the video.

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The return of the long way migrants

Stefania Trasforini — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 12:47:02 +0000

Life Project “Con.Flu.Po”: the construction of the biggest fish passage in Italy.

The fish are maybe the most free creatures that lives next to us: they move invisibles and undisturbed under the surface of streams, rivers and lakes, they are ignored by the common persons and followed only by the patient anglers. We often forget about them, more silent than the birds in the sky and less photographed than the mammals in the woods.
The fish swim, the fish go everywhere. Or almost.
Why are some of the species caught by the grandpa missing today? The answer is paradoxically in a question: what does a fish do when it finds a dam in front of it?
It stops. It has inexorably to give up, especially, if it finds the obstacle on its way up-stream. For the fish is very important to move: whether they are great migrants (sturgeon, eel, twait shad and salmon), or species that move for few kilometers or almost completely sedentary species. Everyone knows the immense effort of the salmons for the reproduction, during their migration up-stream from the sea to the river where they were born; let us even remember the incredible journey of the glass eel, from the Gulf of Mexico up to our lakes, gently pushed from the Gulf stream: these miracles of the nature become impossible when we place dams or others barriers on their route. It happens that the fish, in the best-case scenario, be content with unsuitable habitats, disappearing from the lakes at the foot of the Alps and stopping themselves much more downstream of what their instinct suggests them.
The solution to the issue exists: similar to the tunnel used to avoid the road crossing of the wild animals, the fish passages are genuine “stairs of water” made to let the fish cross the barriers built by the humans, to naturally accomplish their life cycle.
The biggest fish passage in Italy is currently under construction near the only one barrier of the Po River lowland stretch: the Isola Serafini Dam (Monticelli d’Ongina, Piacenza, Lombardy, Italy) for hydroelectric use, in concession to Enel Green Power S.p.a..
Restoring the Po River connectivity is the watchword of the Life-Nature Project (Life11nat/it/188 “Con.Flu.Po”), which intervenes on the basin with the highest biodiversity in our Country. The project is financed by the European Community and Regione Lombardia–DG Agricoltura leads a prestigious partnership with Regione Emilia Romagna, Agenzia Interregionale per il fiume Po, Autorità di bacino del fiume Po, Parco Lombardo della Valle del Ticino, Provincia di Piacenza e di Rovigo and GRAIA.
It was necessary to design two fishway entrances (one for each of the two branches of the Po) that successively links in a single channel. The numbers are astonishing: 635 meters of total length; a discharge of 4 m³/s that will flow in two channels 2,8 m wide and dug up to 10,8 m under the campaign plan. The fish passage is provided with a monitoring room with a window overlooking the channel (to monitor the fish transit); a capture cage made to grant the study of the transiting fish or to pick the most harmful species up. The project includes even the livestock and the release of juvenile specimens of the very rare adriatic sturgeon (Acipenser naccarii) and other native threatened species.
The realization of the gargantuan structure confirms the efforts of Regione Lombardia in the ambitious framework of river connectivity restoration of the water courses in Lombardy. With the inauguration of the Isola Serafini fish passage, the ecological corridor from Lake Lugano to Adriatic Sea will be totally viable to the fish: two fish passages on Ticino River and two on Tresa River (partially financed by Cantone Ticino) have been built within the previous years and both are waiting that this last intervention will finally restore a migration route precluded to the fish since the mid 50s. The barriers on Adda and Oglio River are and will be interested from this huge plan of defragmentation too, and during the next years we and our kids could hopefully admire the return of sturgeons, eels, mullets and twait shads in the areas where they have been missed since many years.

Life Project “Con.Flu.Po” website

Regione Lombardia website

La diga di Isola Serafini

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Rendering di una porzione del passaggio per pesci

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Esemplare di storione cobice

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Primo piano di anguilla

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Fish Passage Conference 2015

Stefania Trasforini — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 13:10:18 +0000

The managing director of GRAIA, dr. Cesare Mario Puzzi, took part to the fifth edition of “Fish Passage 2015 – International conference on river connectivity best practices and innovations” which took place from June 22nd to June 24th, 2015 in Groningen, the Netherlands.

Fish Passage 2015 was an important international forum to exchange findings and experiences on fish related passage issues, to which participated researchers and practitioners from the entire world.
Our managing director, dr. Cesare Mario Puzzi, took part to the event presenting a poster based on the restoring of the Tresa River connectivity (Varese, Lombardy, Italy), the poster showed the first result of the video-monitoring too. For further information please do not hesitate to see the poster attached to this article.

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