Evros / They plant wind generators three hundred and sixty five days after the fireplace

In August 2023, the biggest hearth that has ever been recorded on Eu soil from 2000 to the current day came about in Evros. About 942,500 acres had been burned then, ensuing within the nearly entire lack of crucial habitat of the black vulture within the Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli Nationwide Woodland Park. A yr later, the wind generators’ danger to the significantly endangered hen species is intensifying reasonably than diminishing.

The newest episode used to be the new issuance of 2 licenses by way of the Decentralized Management of Macedonia-Thrace (ADMTH) following a good advice from the Ministry of the Atmosphere (YPEN) for brand new wind farms within the Rhodopes. This building provoked new reactions from the Hellenic Ornithological Society and the Society for the Coverage of Biodiversity of Thrace, who of their sharp observation notice that the set up websites of the wind farms are positioned throughout the Natura 2000 house and fall throughout the mapped “core” of the black vulture’s process. In reality, the Control Unit of the Evros Delta and Dadia Nationwide Parks of OFYPECA gave a transparent and substantiated destructive opinion at the implementation of each tasks. Those, because the organizations pointedly commented, appear to be “nice print” for the Common Directorate of Environmental Coverage of the Ministry of the Inside and the ADMTH, who omitted the information and gave the “inexperienced gentle” for the particular tasks a couple of days aside.

“The herbal setting of Thrace needed to be preserved because the apple of the attention. Regardless of all this, it stays unprotected even nowadays, three hundred and sixty five days after the devastating hearth”, feedback Lefteris Kapsalis, clinical affiliate on the Society for the Coverage of Biodiversity of Thrace, in Sunday’s DAWN. As he emphasizes, the world the place new wind farms are deliberate to be positioned within the Rhodopes has no longer been suffering from final yr’s hearth, on the other hand, this is a vital habitat for birds of prey and vultures, which day by day shuttle lengthy distances to feed, and wind generators were put in alongside those routes , which pose a perfect chance to them.

Executive commitments are an empty letter

“The revel in won’t have develop into a lesson for us if the stations in query are applied,” he notes. As he provides, “within the final 20 years or so, wind generators were incorrectly sited in Thrace, expanding the affect on delicate hen species that experience few folks of their populations, even risking their extinction. We’re speaking about endangered and secure birds, which we’ve got a duty as a rustic to maintain. In reality, the conservation targets had been not too long ago legislated, i.e. the minimal choice of birds that we will have to have in each and every Natura house, however they don’t appear to be revered, since, by way of expanding the threats to the birds with the licensing of such tasks of their vital habitats, it kind of feels that after all the ministry circumvents its personal legislative paintings”. It will have to be famous that 563 incidents of killing birds and bats were recorded up to now on the wind farms running in Evros and Rhodope.

Sadly, because the organizations remark, it as soon as once more proves that the “commitments” to offer protection to the herbal setting of Thrace after final yr’s crisis had been in large part “hole” and given for communique causes. Despite the fact that it’s been transparent from the outset that it’s completely essential to strictly give protection to the vital habitats of the black vulture outdoor of the blistered spaces, with a view to permit the birds to evolve to the brand new scenario, the Management continues with its selections so as to add threats to the black vulture and to degrade its habitat.

As L. Kapsalis concludes by way of reminding, even if 9 organizations had requested for the suspension of destructive tasks to be legislated each within the burned and adjoining spaces, that are mapped as vital for the survival of birds of prey, and regardless of the federal government’s verbal commitments, this it by no means become regulation. Moreover, “whilst it used to be asked that a minimum of the find out about that OFYPEKA has already introduced be finished first in order that we will be able to see the place and at the foundation of what prerequisites we will be able to license such tasks, this used to be no longer finished both.”

An arranged hearth prevention and reaction plan is lacking

Alexandros Dimitrakopoulos, president of the Division of Forestry and Herbal Atmosphere of AUTH, speaks at Sunday’s DAWN and refers back to the local weather disaster and the loss of control of Greek forests

Any other summer season, the rustic noticed devastating fires that burned hundreds of acres of their trail, with conventional circumstances being the fires in Varnavas in Attica and within the mountains of Orvilos and Pangaio in Northern Greece. How will we get such eerie photographs to be recorded within the nation annually? To what extent do the environmental failures that happen encourage the government to keep away from equivalent phenomena someday? Alexandros Dimitrakopoulos, president of the Division of Forestry and Herbal Atmosphere of AUTH, speaks at Sunday’s DAWN and refers back to the local weather disaster and the loss of control of Greek forests.

“That there’s a local weather disaster is plain, particularly this yr, for the reason that the fires began early, with the fireplace in Pieria and the only in Prespes, and unfold all over the summer season to Northern Greece, in beech forests in Orvilos and Mount Pangaio. This is, in puts the place we didn’t have fires and in woodland species the place fires weren’t commonplace, this yr we additionally had many fires, and massive ones. This is without doubt one of the indicators that the local weather is getting hotter and drier, so we can have increasingly more intense woodland fires,” he notes.

“Moreover, for a few years there was no control within the Greek forests, i.e. no roads are opened, no firebreaks are made, lifeless woodland subject material isn’t got rid of, timber aren’t pruned, there’s no human presence within the woodland to regulate it, consequently we’ve got a big accumulation of lifeless woodland biomass which, when a fireplace breaks out, turns into hearth unfold and creates issues,” he continues. However he provides a 3rd issue, noting that “even if annually we alter the firefighting doctrine, purchase new technological method, rent workforce, make hearth prevention plans, the fireplace at all times eludes us. One thing isn’t proper relating to woodland hearth suppression. The ones coping with them will have to be skilled extra and be extra arranged,” he argues.

Quick chance of flooding

Requested to evaluate how tomorrow is prescribed in those spaces, he issues out: “So far as the ecosystem in Southern Greece, and extra so in Attica and Evia, pine forests are species familiar with fires, so I imagine that if nature is left undisturbed, it’ll do its paintings and regenerate those burned spaces over a duration of twenty to thirty years. Within the fires of Northern Greece, the place beech forests burned, that is one thing that had no longer came about sooner than, we had no longer studied it and we have no idea what the regeneration will probably be there, and particularly what the soil erosion will probably be after the fireplace.”

As for whether or not there are dangers of flooding someday, he replies: “I am afraid. No longer so within the Attica Basin, the place the forests have many times burned and the soil has been washed away in lots of puts, in order that there’s no soil to erode. However even there, even within the different forests, which don’t burn so ceaselessly, there’s a right away risk of flooding.”

Are we studying from the fires and what has came about up to now? “We do not be informed” states categorically Al. Dimitrakopoulos and concluding notes: “Our reactions are convulsive. We do not have an arranged plan to stop and combat woodland fires, or, for many who declare we do, the present plan is not operating.”