Other

BBC World Service South Asia

The Compass v2 Podcast

The Compass

Documentaries

Factual: Life Stories

With ideas too big for a single episode, The Compass presents mini-series about society

Surprising stories from unusual places. With ideas too big for a single episode, The Compass presents mini-series about the environment and politics, culture and society.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

The Compass: Walking The Iron Curtain : Walking the Iron Curtain: Frozen frontiers

Factual

Walking the Iron Curtain: Frozen frontiers

06/07/2022 GMT

Walking The Iron Curtain

BBC World Service - The Compass, Walking The Iron Curtain, Walking the Iron Curtain: Frozen frontiers

In some places the Iron Curtain never really went away. Mary-Ann Ochota reaches Finland

How does it feel to live a hundred metres from the Russian border? Mary-Ann Ochota meets the naturalists working along the new Iron Curtain.

A few hundred Lithuanians, dozens of elk and tens of thousands of migrating birds share a narrow parade of sand dunes with the Russian military. Passed between nations and empires for hundreds of years, the Curonian Spit National Park will be on the frontline if Vladimir Putin decides to seize more of the territory he regards as a natural extension of Russia.
 
In the final part of her journey along the Iron Curtain, Mary-Ann Ochota meets the naturalists working metres from the Russian border and the locals forbidden in Soviet times from visiting their local beaches and swimming from their own shores.

From the Baltic coast she travels to northern Finland where border territory is being rewilded. Vast tracts of land are seized back from the forestry and peat industries and returned to the forest reindeer and wolverines that once thrived here. The Finnish naturalists once worked hand-in-hand with their Russian colleagues but today the age-old fear of their powerful neighbour has returned. The dream of the European Greenbelt, linking people and nature across dissolving borders, here meets the stark reality of aggressive nationalism.

(Photo: The sand dunes of the Curonian Split are cut in half by Lithuania’s border with Russia)

The Compass: Walking The Iron Curtain 

Walking The Iron Curtain 

Mary-Ann Ochota explores the world's longest wildlife reserve

25 years ago a group of naturalists devised a cunning plan, to create the world's longest wildlife reserve.  The no-man’s land, between Communist East and Capitalist West was a death-strip for humans but an accidental haven for rare birds and mammals.  If it could be kept free of development then this European Greenbelt could help heal the continent’s natural and political divisions.  Mary-Ann Ochota travels the 12,500km length of the Iron Curtain to gauge their success as fear and conflict once more close-in on Europe's eastern borders.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Compass

Walking The Iron Curtain

Walking the Iron Curtain: Frozen frontiers

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC World Service South Asia

About BBC World Service