Great War Island () is a river island in Belgrade, capital of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. Though uninhabited, the island is part of the Belgrade City proper, and belongs to the city municipality of Zemun.
Location
Great War Island is located at the mouth of the Sava river into the Danube, in the Danube's widening between the Kalemegdan fortress as the ending section of the Terazije ridge of the northernmost part of Šumadija on the west and the low, easternmost section of the Syrmia plain, the modern Ušće neighborhood of New Belgrade, on the south.
The island is relatively close to the banks, at the closest it is just away from both New Belgrade and Kalemegdan. On the south, halfway between the Great War Island and Ušće is the remnant of Little War Island.
In 2005, an initiative was started to transfer the island administratively, from Zemun to the New Belgrade municipality. The initiative ultimately failed.
Name
The island gained its militant name due to its history as an important strategic point either for the conquest or the defence of Belgrade. It had especially good position for cannons and was usually used as the starting point for the attack on Belgrade's harbor. It was also used as the hiding place for hajduks, Šajkaši, and various river pirates. Numerous military facilities and fortifications were built and demolished on the island in time. During the wars, temporary, pontoon bridges were built connecting the three river sides (Belgrade, Zemun and Pančevo) with each other via the island, allowing the armies to cross over the rivers.
During history, almost a dozen different names for the island were recorded, some of them colloquial and unofficial. They include Dunavsko ostrvo (Danubian Island), Cigansko ostrvo (Gypsy Island), Veselo ostrvo (Merry Island), Vojno ostrvo (Military Island), Ratno ostrvo (War Island), Ratna ostrva (War Islands, when applied jointly to the Little War Island), Babalık ada (Babalık Island), Veliko vojno ostrvo (Great Military Island), Veliko ostrvo rata (Great Island of War) and Sirotinjsko ostrvo (Poor Man's Island). The present name, Great War Island, appeared in the mid-19th century and became permanent after World War I.
Geography
The Great War Island is generally triangular in shape and covers an area of . It is low, for the most part marshy and often flooded by the Danube. The main physical feature on the island is the canal of Veliki Galijaš. It is a remnant of the canal around which the sediments formed the opriginall barrier island which later joined into one. In time, the canal was cut off from the Danube and effectively turned into a lake, with an area of and the major natural bird and fish spawning area on the island. Next to it was a smaller wetland, Mali Galijaš, which was also and excellent natural spawning ground. However, during drought years the lake drains completely causing damage to the closed eco-system centered around it. Veliki Galijaš was revitalized later, but Mali Galijaš was completely covered with overgrowth. Currently some two-thirds of the island is used as a nature reserve for 196 bird species, many of which are endangered. One of Belgrade's beaches, Lido, is located on the northern tip of the island.
Geologically, the island is a Quaternary formation which formed at the mouth of two large rivers. Developed around several "pillars" (areas where sedimentation began), the island is a formation which changes and grows all the time (geo-dynamically active terrain). Only since the 1960s, it grew by some , or fifth of its 2020's size. Sediments are being brought even by the underground water. Because of the sedimentation, occasional drainage and removal of the silt from the northern tip of the island is necessary, as otherwise it would make a land connection to the bank of the Danube.
Wildlife Plants
Plant life on the island includes the typical marshy flora, like reed, yellow flag or rush, but also trees like black poplar, ash tree, White Elm, elderberry, hawthorn and even some rare conifers.
A rare orchid Orchis palustris Jacq. was spotted for the first time in Belgrade in 1896 on the Great War Island, but was never seen again there. It has been re-discovered in the Makiš area in 1955, but by 2001 it disappeared, too, and today can be found only around the lake of Veliko Blato, in the neighborhood of Krnjača.
The island is the only location in Serbia of the bird's little nest fungi, which is used for the antioxidant extraction.
Forests cover and area of , or 57% of the island. Tree species include walnut tree and European nettle tree. In November 2011 some 2,500 seedlings of the pedunculate oak were planted. Higher forest coverage influences the micro climate and provides new habitats for the birds. Autochthonous tree species include willow and poplar. By November 2017, the island has been populated with 5,850 seedlings of pedunculate oak, 1,000 of narrow-leafed ash, 1,755 of European white elm and 800 of black poplar. The last two are declared endangered species in Serbia. Also planted were 1,000 bald cypresses, which adapted nicely and began to reproduce.
Fish
A total of 53 species of fish were found in and around the island.
Birds
There are 66 bird species which actually nest on the island, 43 non-migratory and 23 migratory birds. In winter, during the nesting period, there are some 80 species present, while in the migration season, number rises to over 100. Some of the species are pygmy cormorant, black stork, mergansers, seven species of herons, over 40 species of ducks, and Icterine warbler. Altogether, 163 different bird species inhabited the island in the early 2010s, but by the 2020s, 208 species of birds were recorded, of which 200 were protected in some way.
The island was the largest colony of the great egret on the entire course of the Danube, maybe the largest one in the Europe. During the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, the herons, for the most part, disappeared.
Major attraction on the island is a pair of white-tailed eagles. A nesting couple, they settled on the island in 2010, migrating from the marshland of Pančevački Rit, across the Danube. They built a large nest, in diameter, at the height of . There are five other nesting couples in the wider Belgrade area, and some 90 in the entire Serbia, but having them reproducing at only from the downtown of a city of this size is an exceptional rarity. They reproduced for the first time three years later, in 2013. In April 2016, when their chicks were to be hatched, the city's communal services installed a camera in the nest. The project was unique, with the similar one in Estonia, but Belgrade is the only European capital to have it. Before the next generation of chicks hatched in 2017, live feed was posted online.Orao belorepan – Veliko Ratno Ostrvo 2017 The largest European eagles, with the wingspan up to , are best observed from the neighboring Ušće and Dorćol districts, but they are being spotted circling above the Kalemegdan and the Republic Square, practically the center of Belgrade.
The couple was named Radovan and Ruža. In the summer of 2021, one of their male offspring, Dušan, was tagged with solar-battery satellite tracker. The technology helped management of the growth of the griffon vultures population in the Uvac Special Nature Reserve. It is introduced here for the same purpose and survey of the Belgrade's surrounding nesting areas of white-tailed eagles, like the wetlands of Beljarica or Reva.
Mammals
On the 9 October 2008 a species of the pygmy bat, soprano pipistrelle, was discovered on the island. It is a rare mammal, having a wingspan of and weight of only . Naturalists suspected that soprano pipistrelle lives in Serbia, in the Obedska bara region, but this was the first time that the bat was actually seen and caught. There are numerous colonies of various bat species on the island.
In October 2008, 21 species of mammals were recorded on the island. They included, in Belgrade rarely seen, otters, nutrias, weasels and European pine martens, but also a roe deer.
There is a colony of wild boars on the Great War Island. The population originated from the marshy area of Pančevački Rit and they reached the island swimming to it during one of the previous floods. As of 2019, it was estimated to have over 35 individual animals. Rarely, they swim across the arm of the Danube which separates the island from the urban mainland, and can be seen in Zemun or Novi Beograd. Popular case was from 2014 when a wild boar was discovered in the garage of the Energoprojekt holding company. In June 2019 due to the rise of the water level which flooded the entire island, wild boars scattered all over Belgrade, making media sensation. Numerous videos and photos of boars swimming across the rivers were posted. A small herd of wild boars was seen in New Belgrade's Block 30. Animals, including disoriented solitary piglets which is highly unusual behavior, were seen in Block 8 and in the neighborhoods of Ušće and Zemunski Kej. Wild boars have even been spotted in Belgrade's downtown: in Belgrade Fortress and Obilićev Venac, where one animal fell to its death from the multistorey car park. Though hunting organizations stated that there is no danger as wild boars avoid people, Ministry of Agriculture issued a warning, stating that people should abstain from night walks in the forested area across the island.
Fluctuating number of wild boars grew again by 2020 and they began to completely devastate gardens kept by the people from the mainland. However, as the area is protected and the gardens shouldn't be there at all, no official action was taken. Still, the authorities tried to relocate a number of boars to another location. Traps were placed, but the boars ate of corn placed as a decoy in two days, and only one piglet was trapped. Growing numbers of wild boars were reported in the wider Balkans area (rest of Serbia, Bulgaria) due to the favorable climate conditions in 2020 but more to the COVID-19 pandemic which restricted hunting.
History
Great War Island is not an old geographical feature. Based on the historical data and descriptions of the river battles on the Danube, it is believed that it has been fully formed as an island in the second half of the 15th century. It had origins as a small 14th century sandbank which was divided and morphed by the Danube, as depicted on some engravings. Blueprints of the Belgrade Fortress from 1456 confirm the existence of the sandbank. The arm of the Danube which divided the sandbank was called Dunavski potok (Danube's stream or creek).
It appeared on the proper maps for the first time in the 1514-1528 map Tabula Hungariae by the cartographer . Historian Kome chronicled the fall of Zemun to the Turks in 1521 and mentioned the island as the location where all of the imprisoned defenders of the city were interred, including their wives and children. In 1521, when Belgrade was under siege by Turkish forces, the majority of their attacks on Belgrade fortress were launched from the island. Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi visited the region in the 1660s and mentioned the island. He wrote about the mosque on the island, named after a certain Ahmet Babalık. One of the earlier names for the island, Babalık Island, came from the name of the mosque. First written record on the island from someone who visited it is from 1699, when an English travelling doctor described it as the "large, forested island".