![Greek ecosystems face rising hearth threat, consultants say Greek ecosystems face rising hearth threat, consultants say](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/2023/volos-central-greece-h.jpg)
Greek ecosystems face rising hearth threat, consultants say
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![Volos, central Greece, has been one of the worst-hit areas. Volos, central Greece, has been one of the worst-hit areas](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2023/volos-central-greece-h.jpg)
Two weeks of sweltering warmth and wildfires have confirmed fears that Greece’s ecosystem is below rising threat, consultants say.
Some 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) of forest and vegetation have been left scorched, in line with estimates by the Nationwide Observatory of Athens.
This makes the month of July the worst in 13 years when it comes to burned land, stated Charalampos Kontoes, a analysis director on the observatory.
“It was a dry winter, and spring rains weren’t sufficient to keep up” moisture within the soil, Kontoes instructed AFP.
Civil safety minister Vassilis Kikilias this week stated crews had battled greater than 660 blazes this month, a median of fifty to 70 fires a day.
Companies and farms on the vacationer islands of Corfu and Rhodes, Greece’s second-largest island of Evia and the countryside close to Volos, central Greece, bore the brunt of the injury this 12 months.
The Greek state affiliation insuring farmers, ELGA, estimates that fifty,000 olive bushes and a couple of,500 animals and beehives have been destroyed on Rhodes.
Within the Volos space, the group stated it had discovered “important losses” in harvested grain and grapes, along with farm equipment and buildings.
Main losses in livestock have additionally hit, it added.
Repetitive fires
Greece suffers forest fires yearly. In 2007, they left 84 lifeless within the Peloponnese peninsula and Evia. In 2018, 103 individuals died in Mati, a seaside resort close to Athens.
Three individuals died in Evia two years in the past, and 5 thus far this 12 months.
“Repetitive fires endanger the ecosystem. The forests are reworked into agricultural-forest land, the brushwood into scrubland,” stated Nikos Bokaris, head of the Greek union of foresters.
“The panorama tends to vary and resemble African landscapes,” he added.
In Rhodes, the place the fires broke out on July 18, a big a part of the native fauna together with the island’s emblematic fallow deer was critically affected, stated Grigoris Dimitriadis, head of the native environmental safety affiliation.
As well as, the European Union’s local weather observatory Copernicus on Wednesday stated smoke emissions from wildfires in Greece had been the best for this time period within the final 21 years.
Prevention
Kontoes famous that the mountains round in Athens go up in flames on common each six years.
This impacts the ecosystem of probably the most densely populated cities in Europe, which homes greater than a 3rd of the Greek inhabitants of 10.5 million, he stated.
Bokaris added that the scenario is especially problematic within the Greek capital as “there are few inexperienced areas and concrete buildings create a closed thermal atmosphere”.
The Greek authorities, which blames the fires totally on the local weather disaster, is usually accused of not doing sufficient to guard biodiversity and forestall the fires.
“This 12 months, prevention began just a little late—however firebreaks or different preventive measures are usually not at all times a panacea when the hearth takes on monumental dimensions,” Bokaris stated.
The forecaster stated Greece in 2022 acquired 55 million euros ($60 million) in European funds for hearth prevention, adopted by one other 86 million this 12 months.
His proposal is to let the burned land regenerate and prohibit the conversion of “burned forests into areas for cultivation or development”, as typically occurs.
“The local weather disaster didn’t seem instantly and cooperation between authorities, native authorities and volunteers is critical to fight it,” stated Alexandra Messare of Greenpeace Greece.
© 2023 AFP
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Greek ecosystems face rising hearth threat, consultants say (2023, July 30)
retrieved 30 July 2023
from https://phys.org/information/2023-07-greek-ecosystems-experts.html
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