Ileia build now it is burnt anyway
Ημερομηνία Thursday, November 15 @ 14:24:30 UTC
Θέμα ?λλη Ελλάδα


Article in the GUARDIAN,
A very good introduction to greek reality regarding
the fires and conservation:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/naturaldisasters/story/0,,2208182,00.html

The argunment "build now, it is burnt anyway" does not hold.
There are plenty of counter arguments, apart from the common sense of justice, and can be variable and extensive (economic, social, environmental, religious, etc). 

I will only mention what I saw (and took pictures of)during my tour in Ileia, one week before returning to Brighton:

The burnt land is not continuous. There are plenty of habitat islands among burnt forests and meadows, and i had the great luck to hear and see several refugees there (such as eagle owls, snakes and even turtles).
Recolonization may take long time, but the shiny green shoots rising from the ashes give grounds for optimism.
Kaiaphas coastal forest has suffered a great damage.
However, there are still intact patches, and some of them are the ones that would be harder to regenerate, that is the ones growing on sand, at the border
between forest and sand dune vegetation.
The latter seems to be unaffected by the fires. There is still a great diversity of plants, arthropods and molluscs, and it is one of the rare nesting sites of
the sea turtle.
So, even if the whole coastal forest was destroyed (which is not the case), there would be still an important habitat to protect.

Unfortunately, there are not adequate data available on line. I was also told by the forest service of Olympia district that there is not a complete species
list of the area, but a collection of scatered surveys undertaken by students, individual naturalists and probably the Hellenic Ornithological Society.

I am trying to collect as much data as i can and upload my pictures on the web (3 of them attached).
Every kind of help is more than welcome.

Several pictures  of the area (but not mine)at:
http://www.webshots.com/search?query=kaiafas&new=1&source=chromeheader

Olia.







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