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Maribor Lake (Reservoir)
The Maribor Lake is an attractive recreational area. In the last decade, Dravske Elektrarne Maribor has successfully improved a number of tourist-recreational points on the lake. These include deeper moorings and the deepening of the lake floor for the boathouse and tourist facilities, the repair of tributary outlet, the creation of artificial islands, and the maintenance and expansion of tourism possibilities on the lake. During the maintenance work both here and at Ptuj Lake, the possibilities for water-related tourism and recreational use were taken into account.
Ptuj Lake (Reservoir)
The Ptuj Lake is an important refuge for migrating, rare and endangered species of birds, which have found a replacement habitat here. The lake also offers interesting recreational opportunities. Dravske Elektrarne Maribor has, through the thoughtful maintenance of valuable natural assets, set up a pilot program that includes the lining of banks and their landscaping.
Common tern nesting island
Dravske Elektrarne Maribor, in cooperation with BirdLife Slovenia, has implemented the largest project of its kind aimed at the protection of a critically endangered bird in Slovenia, an artificial nesting island for the common tern. The location was chosen based on an exact land survey snapshot, ensuring its meeting of the bird's needs. The island will contribute to maintaining the common tern population and will provide habitat for migrating shorebirds that nest only on open surfaces, especially on gravely river islands. The common tern once nested on natural gravel beds on the Drava River, but the change in river dynamics influencing its overgrowth led to the moving of the birds to other regions. In 2004, only two colonies of the common tern still existed in Slovenia, and the critical shortage of nesting grounds could, in the future, cause the complete disappearance of local populations of this species. The new artificial island, with conditions similar to natural gravel beds, has resulted in the bird’s return to its natural surroundings.
Depot for floating debris
The current of the Drava River brings with it various types of floating debris, which can, during periods of high water, cause the blockage of turbine trash-racks and cause a decrease or even standstill in the generation of electric power (in short, also influencing the ecological status of the waters downstream). Therefore, Dravske Elektrarne Maribor cares about the effective removal of floating debris. Somewhere between 3000 and 8000 m3 of floating debris is removed annually and is taken to a temporary depot within the fence area of the Zlatoličje Power Plant. Organic debris is treated like raw materials for additional processing – the ground up debris is used as humus.
Wild Sail
For the maintenance of hyroelectric facilities, inspection of dykes along all flows of the Drava River and for maintenance of parts of hydroelectric power plants and regarding ecologically significant works on reservoirs, Dravske elektrarne Maribor maintains a special working vessel, which already through its name draws attention to its ecological purpose. The Wild Sail (Anemone Sylvestris) is named after the vegetation found in wet regions. The environment of the boat are the reservoirs, potential growing spaces of plants bearing the same name and the Maribor otok where the flowers of the buttercup family had already bloomed for centuries.
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