On Friday, March 15th, thousand of Romanians have protested for 15 minutes, asking for highways to be built in their country. WWF posted on its Facebook page a message asking for wildlife connectivity to be considered when planning and building the new infrastructure.

15.15.15

A sequence of numbers that Romanians read as "on March 15th at 15:00 we stop for 15 minutes" in order to ask for highways to be built in their country. Romania is the country in Europe with the least kilometers of highway per capita. And, while new infrastructure is planned as part of the TEN-T network development, the actual building process faces various delays. Citizens are concerned about this situation, and were fast in reacting to the invitation to protest launched by a young businessman from Suceava, a city in the North of the country, a region that does not have any motorway connection to the rest of Romania, and, implicitly, with Western Europe. The protest was known as #șîeu a Romanian translation of #metoo but with a local accent from Suceava, the birthplace of the movement and its initiator.

Thousands of citizens joined the protest, as well as companies and institutions - from banks to hospitals, or the Romanian Chamber of Commerce, from trade unions to the pastry shop in Cluj which baked one meter of chocolate cake to show how a highway can be built meter by meter.

The message posted by WWF-Romania on its Facebook page had a reach of over 17.000 people in 2 days. The post reads:

We want highways. #metoo - would reply the bear, the wolf, the lynx, the fox, the deer or the wild boar. The Carpathians have always been a "highway for animals" who use their own migration corridors in search of food, shelter, or ... a partner. Building new highways risks creating barriers across migration corridors essential for the survival of wild species.

What can one do when two roads cross? Create proper bridges in the right places. Romania wants highways. But Romania also loves nature. We support nature-friendly motorways. #metoo #ecoduct #highway_for_wildlife #highway_for people #transgreen