News

The preparations for July’s Summer School on Wetland Management and Monitoring have begun! Specially filmed videos, interactive presentations, and a variety of different means for digital delivery, are being developed for the summer school, as it will take place entirely online this year.

Today we’re celebrating the International Day for Biological Diversity in solidarity with our PrespaNet partners!

Waterbirds monitoring activities continue intensively, as we approach summer and the breeding process is at its peak. To monitor the populations of pygmy cormorants and herons nesting in mixed colonies in dense and inaccessible reedbeds of Lesser Prespa, the SPP uses a combination of methods, including flight line counts (aka the "Arrival-Departure" method), which was implemented yesterday.

A layman’s summary of findings

A few days ago, a paper published in the Euro-Mediterranean Journal for Environmental Integration assesses the potential impacts of future climate change on bean cultivation in the Prespa region. 

In a webinar on the biodiversity of Prespa that was carried out by the Department of Forestry and Management of the Natural Environment at the Agricultural University of Athens on Friday 10th April, the president of the Management Body for the Prespa National Park, as well as personnel and partners of the Society for the Protection of Prespa, participated as speakers, while more than 100 students followed the presentations. 

While all of us are working from home, a small number of the LIFE Prespa Waterbirds project team have been out in the field, keeping up our monitoring work in the wetland – strictly observing all the safety measures, of course.

On Monday 9th March the wardens of the Management Body for the Prespa National Park, in collaboration with the LIFE Prespa Waterbirds team at the Society for the Protection of Prespa, once again renewed the red buoys around the pelican colonies on Lesser Prespa Lake, as they do every year, aiming to prevent disturbance to the birds from passing boats.

The training seminar held in the framework of LIFE project "Pelican Way of LIFE" at Prespa on 25 & 26 February was attended by scientific and technical staff from the Bulgarian Ornithological Society (BSPB) and the Persina Nature Park Directorate in Bulgaria, from the Romanian Ornithological Society (SOR), from the Hellenic Ornithological Society and the Management Bodies of Amvrakikos Gulf - Lefkada and Mesollonghi lagoon – Akarnanika mountain. 

Wetland management includes the use of the amphibious cutting machine in order to create firebreak zones in the reedbed and drainage ditches. 

The second phase of the experimental use of reed biomass as soil conditions started on the 19th February with the application of reed biomass in three fields provided by three participating local farmers.