"The first and most obvious casualties of any war are people - but the environment nearly always suffers too, which usually means that people in a war-torn region lose out too. This seems certain to be the case in Yugoslavia, where a number of chemical plants and oil refineries were targetted during the recently ended 78-day war, although the extent of the damage is not yet clear. Many of the pollutants released during the war spilt directly into the Danube river, which flows through Yugoslavia, into Romania and down through Bulgaria into the Black Sea. The Danube river, surrounding wetlands and the lower Danube Delta have long been a focus of conservation priority for WWF, which has been working in the region since 1992 to expand the network of wetland, forest and coastal protected areas, and to restore both wetlands and natural forests in the region "