2024-06-19 20:26:32
With a dominant message “Aoos with out obstacles: Becoming a member of forces for the primary Cross-Border Free River Park in Europe, Aoos/Vjosa”, the scientific week in Sarantaporos, a tributary of the Aoos -also often known as Sarantaporos Science Week-, begins on Friday 28 June with the intention the highlighting of the environmental worth of the river and the strengthening of efforts for its substantial safety and preservation.
Following the examples of earlier science weeks organized as a part of the Save the Blue Coronary heart of Europe marketing campaign, such because the one on the Neretva River in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the latest one within the Vjosa Delta, Sarantaporos Science Week is organized for the primary time in Greece. Greater than 60 Greek, Albanian and different European volunteer scientists from a complete of seven nations, 17 universities and 5 analysis facilities – ichthyologists, hydrologists, ornithologists, entomologists, scientists coping with underground life, and so forth. – will collaborate by accumulating new information on the biodiversity and the pure processes of Sarandaporos and its streams, a little-studied a part of the Aoos river basin and likewise of Greece, with the last word aim of its complete institutional safety.
The selection of Sarandaporos isn’t random. In November 2023, the final unprotected part of the Aoos River, which coincides with the Sarandaporos watershed, was designated as a Protected Pure Formation and a Protected Panorama by the Ministry of Setting and Power. Nonetheless, to this present day, the situations and limitations related to this designation stay undefined and the Sarandaporos space continues to face vital threats, primarily the deliberate set up of roughly 30 small hydroelectric crops (out of the almost 50 deliberate in all the Aoos catchment space). These tasks will degrade the river’s ecological integrity, inflicting irreversible impacts on the area’s ecosystems and biodiversity, in addition to severe alterations to the river’s hydromorphology, affecting each side of the border.
Upgrading the safety of all the Aoos watershed (together with its tributaries and streams) right into a Nationwide Park, by means of the extension of the boundaries of the North Pindos Nationwide Park to the Greece-Albania border, would create the required framework to determine the primary Wild River Transboundary Park in Europe, Aoou/Vjosa.
On this route, the Sarantaporos Science Week is a vital worldwide multidisciplinary initiative to spotlight, protect and institutionally protect a novel river ecosystem: the Aoos/Vjosa, the final giant free-flowing river in Europe.
Sarantaporos Science Week is organized by the Mediterranean Institute for Nature and Man (MedINA) in collaboration with Euronatur, RiverWatch and EcoAlbania, inside the Save the Blue Coronary heart of Europe marketing campaign, with the assist of the Municipality of Konitsa and the Hellinikon Marine Analysis Heart (ELKETHE).
It’s carried out with funding from the Prespa Ohrid Nature Belief (PONT), Patagonia, the Austrian Improvement Company by means of the “ESPID4Vjosa” undertaking, the Manfred-Hermsen-Stiftung, EU LIFE and Wetlands Worldwide Europe.