KEY POINTS:
Augustow is not the most obvious place for a health resort: an unremarkable modern town in the far northeast corner of Poland, most famous for being on the busy main road between the Baltic states to the north and the rest of Europe.
Every 16 seconds, a lorry trundles through the small community.
The appeal of Augustow, though, is the countryside around it - big horizons of farmland and ancient forest, crossed by untamed rivers.
There is also the quiet of the primeval fens in the nearby Rospuda valley - a quiet that is being disturbed by plans to build a new motorway.
The case of the Augustow bypass is a classic example of the struggle between the demand to develop some of the poorest parts of Europe and a desire to protect some of its best-preserved natural environments.
But more than almost any other case in Europe, the fate of Rospuda valley is seen as a test of how governments across central and eastern Europe will spend billions of euros of European Union grants and loans to develop their infrastructure and economies - including controversial schemes for roads, canals, dams and wind farms.
In ecological terms, destroying Rospuda valley is beyond comparison in modern times, according to Grahame Madge, conservation spokesman for the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
"The birds and mammals found in Rospuda - wild boar, elk, lynx, cranes nesting in profusion; this is what the fens would have been like in Iron Age Britain," says Madge.
For centuries, plants and trees have lived, died and decayed into the floor of the Rospuda valley, where they have decomposed into a metres-deep sodden peat.
"The valley is only 10sq km; it's a little bit of something fantastic that happened and everybody forgot," says Adam Wajrak, a Polish environment journalist and campaigner.
Today Rospuda valley quivers with life: lizards and insects with wings like blades of grass slip between ferns and moss; jays call out in imitation of the buzzards; in autumn, red marsh berries grow; in spring, wild orchids bloom. It is a magical place.
Small wonder that a campaign has built up against the road project, uniting local and international environmentalists, scientists, politicians and even the European Court of Justice. The most immediate threat, they claim, is to the valley's wildlife.
Some of Europe's last wild boar, Eurasian lynx and wolves roam the fens; white-tailed and lesser-spotted eagles breed here.
This is Poland's last refuge of rare musk orchids. The European Habitats Directive list of the species most in need of protection includes four mammals, 23 birds and two plants found in the valley.
More than individual species, it is the ecosystem of what is thought to be the last "pristine" fen of its kind in Europe that scientists and campaigners most want to protect, both as a relic of ancient Europe and as a "reference system" for restoring the continent's many degraded fenlands.
These are seen as an important tool in the fight against global warming because peat stores vast reservoirs of carbon dioxide.
The plan to build the 17km expressway was initiated 15 years ago, as heavy lorry traffic began to cause problems in Augustow (population 30,000).
Sparing residents the noise, pollution and danger of the traffic is not the only benefit of the road, says Andrzej Maciejewski, head of public relations for the national roads agency. The road is also vital to the economy of the region, one of the poorest in Europe.
"Without these roads we'll not be able to reach the medium level of [economic development in] the EU in a few years. We'll have to wait a long, long time," he says.
Opponents don't deny the need for the road: the battle is over the route chosen by the Government through the middle of the valley.
Environmental groups have proposed a slightly longer route through the far end of the valley.
The two sides are locked in a contest of statistics and expert reports: the Government claims that its road would damage only 0.1 per cent of the valley, would affect fewer protected species and that its scientific advisers have judged it as having the "lowest possible" impact.
Opponents say it is not the direct impact of the bridge pillars that matters, but that compaction caused by construction machinery will cause "irreversible damage".
Hundreds of scientists have now written to protest against the bypass, and, separately, Wajrak arranged for 450 Polish scientists to sign a letter of protest, claiming that the bypass was "a destruction catastrophe unparalleled in the civilised world in the last decades".
Work on the road through the valley was suspended this northern summer pending a European Court of Justice case against the Polish Government. A decision on whether the Government will have to reconsider the route could take six months to two years.
The Augustow bypass has become a cause celebre of the growing concern about the environmental impact of billions of euros from the EU and the European Investment Bank being pumped into the eight central and eastern European countries which joined the EU in 2004.
Slower development of intensive agriculture and industry in these countries saved habitats and species which have been wiped out in Western Europe.
One sign of this is the extraordinary richness of birdlife in Poland compared to countries like Britain, says Dr Przemek Chylarecki, chairman of the common bird monitoring project for the Polish Academy of Sciences. "[Britain has] six times less yellowhammer or skylark per unit of area than we have. This is with quite common birds."
The campaign group Bankwatch analysed £78 billion of funds from the European Investment Bank between 1996 and 2005. It calculated that more than half the transport funding supported roads and airports and nearly one third of industrial lending went to the car industry.
The RSPB says proposals of particular concern include a motorway through Kresna Gorge in Bulgaria, a canal from the Black Sea to the Danube and wind farms on bird migration routes.
If the Polish Government wins, campaigners fear the worst.
"Conservationists realise other governments will be watching and bring forward their cases if they see Poland get away with it," says Madge.
Meanwhile, the struggle has exposed vigorous debate about the dual responsibilities of Poland and other countries to improve the economies of some of the poorest parts of Europe while protecting some of the best natural habitats.
Campaigners claim Poland has a legal and moral obligation to protect its environmental riches.
The Government replies that roads need to be part of a "sustainable development" strategy.
Environmental leaders say they accept compromise is necessary but, they claim, development needs to be slowed down.
"The richer Poland becomes, the more responsible we have to become for our ecological footprint," says Maciej Muskat, director of Greenpeace Poland.
"Very often the environment is presented as an obstacle to development, but if you reframe the topic, if development for example would include, to a bigger extent, quality of life for the next generation and generations after, we would have a different narrative."
- Observer
