News

Wetlands and biodiversity: Why does biodiversity matter?

The school children of our area were prompted to seek the difficult and multi-facet answer to this phenomenally simple question, through a series of activities and interactive games.

Yesterday the Presplorers were in the field helping to count the number of waterbirds wintering in Prespa. As usual the meeting point was the public library and from there we went to Great Prespa Lake in order to count both the different species and numbers of birds in Psaradhes Bay. 

On Wednesday 15th January, at the offices of the Management Body for the Prespa National Park, the first meeting of the LIFE18 NAT/GR/000768 ARCPROM project – ‘Improving human-bear co-existence in 4 National Parks of South Europe’ was carried out, focussing on the implementation of the project activities in the region.

According to the results of the 4th Annual National Pelican Report, the breeding population of Dalmatian pelicans in 2018 in Greece was 2,082 breeding pairs, while that of great white pelicans was 614 pairs. 

The project calendar for 2020, which is dedicated to the activities and partnerships of the project, was disseminated.

Following the catastrophic fires in the reedbeds this February and March, in which 300 hectares of wetland vegetation were burnt, the MBPNP held a meeting on the subject with local authorities and organisations. 

On Saturday 9th November, at the public library of Laimos, the Presplorers team, together with a group of younger students, journeyed into the world of books and creative writing. Their guide was an award-winning author of works for children and young adults.

Having started in July, the cutting of wetland vegetation for 2019 has now been completed after intensive efforts. The project team joined forces with the stockbreeders of the area for this management, and with their joint effort about 83 hectares of wetland vegetation were cut.

In mid-September Presplorers visited the island of Agios Achillios and filmed the last shots for their documentary.

The results of our long-standing collaboration with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in regards to the ecology of Dalmatian pelicans, were published in IBIS last June. As mentioned in the article, we fitted GPS/GSM transmitters on 14 Dalmatian pelicans.