Zagreb, March 14th 2016 – The campaign of planting 500 new plants around the Jarun Lake symbolically started this morning. The Mayor of Zagreb, Milan Bandic, together with the Minister of Science, Education and Sports, Predrag Sustar, Rector of the University of Zagreb, Damir Boras and President of the European Universities Games Zagreb – Rijeka 2016 (EUG 2016), Zrinko Custonja, planted the first tree. The tree campaign for Jarun Lake started as part of the organizational programme of the EUG 2016, which will be hosted in Zagreb and Rijeka this July.
Newly planted trees will represent the universities that will participate at the EUG 2016. New trees will also enrich the environment around Jarun Lake which will be the official venue for a variety of sports competitions during this multi-sport event, the biggest ever in Croatia.
“Every tree will be named after one of the European universities that will participate at EUG 2016, and even now we know that students from Sorbonne, Oxford, Cambridge and 40 other European universities are coming to Croatia. Arrivals of top athletes, future leaders and intellectuals to Croatia will leave a great impact on our country and Croatian academic sport”- said Zrinko Custonja.
The trees that will be planted are called Celtis australis (hackberry) and Corylus colurna (Turkish hazel). Numerous famous athletes – representatives of various sports that will be presented among twenty-one sport, joined the plantation of trees this morning. The students from more than 300 European universities will compete during the EUG 2016 in Rijeka and Zagreb.
The gymnast Mario Moznik and basketball players of Cibona also joined this capaign as the EUG 2016 Ambassadors, along with the Sinkovic brothers in rowing and handball players of PPD Zagreb and Lokomotiva.
Planting trees is just one of activities initiated to ensure the rich legacy that students, athletes and the whole community will use after the EUG 2016. New seedlings of trees will decorate the southwest part of the large lake and will thus further contribute to the breeding of flora and fauna. But also, they will remain a permanent memory of the European Universities Games 2016 for many generations.
