After successfully completing his previous project “Rivers of Croatia”, Croatian biologist, photographer and author Goran Šafarek has just started his next project aimed at exploring rivers, “Rivers of the World”.
The Rivers of Croatia project was started in 2008, and during that, Šafarek visited and recorded many Croatian rivers, published a book, several short videos and made a documentary, which will soon be shown on Croatian Radiotelevision, Tanja Rudež writes for Jutarnji list.
In addition to Croatian rivers, he also joined many expeditions (Andes-Amazon in 2000, Madagascar in ’01, ’04 and ’07, Costa Rica in ’03 and many others), during which he got to understand the importance of rivers in the world.
The amazing Amazon river is one of them, including its numerous tributaries that are still quite unknown. Šafarek highlights the fact that the rivers are still maintaining high biodiversity, although they’re often neglected when we talk about global warming.
In recent years, river management has been changing again, and rivers have been being revitalised. He added that this is not a tourist project, rather that he’d like to visit some of the wildest regions on Earth, on real expeditions.
It will be a long project, consisting of several separate expeditions. His main goal is to make a documentary series for the international audience and write a book. While the project is underway, he’ll publish short videos and films, as well as write about his findings. He mostly plans to finance the project on his own, but some of his expeditions will be together with other biologists already on certain locations.
The first stage of the project is dedicated to the big rivers of Asia, from the Himalayan glaciers to the large deltas, and he plans to start with it this winter. Goran Šafarek explains that his other goals include the Amazon, the Nile, the Okavango river in South Africa, and some interesting rivers in Iceland, in Alaska and in the Siberia. You can follow the project on the Facebook page Rivers of the World.
