Walking the Iron Curtain: Frozen frontiers

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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)