‘We worry about it disappearing’: alarm grows over Italy’s drought-hit Po River

Boats lie on a desiccated bank of the River Po in Boretto, Italy. Photograph: Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

When the amateur photographer Alessio Bonin had a few hours to spare one afternoon in late March, he decided to venture to a nature reserve in Gualtieri, an Italian town on the banks of the Po River in Emilia-Romagna.

The drought that had been blighting the country’s longest waterway since one of its driest winters was showing no sign of easing.