Mid December 2012
Sometimes conservation workshops are world class!
This one was: IUCN Freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas Workshop for the "Mediterranean Balkans Hotspot".
Anyone who knows a little about 'saving places', knows that the inventory and evaluation process is critically important, especially when opportunties arise. So are geographical boundaries- critical lines on maps. That is exactly what the IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit is helping us do. Thanks to the organizers....Experts from Croatia, BIH, Germany, Spain, the UK and Greece met here, and we are helping to draw catchment site boundaries, correcting really messed-up GIS model hydrosheds, arguing about species' distributions, thinking about what to do next....
The meeting could not take place at a more distinctive locale. A place divided by political boundary lines drawn in blood by civil war. One of the worst chapters of modern European history took place here. This is Bosnia & Herzegovina near Sarajevo. In contrast to this recent past, the location is now a peaceful mountain resort. Based at a wonderful hotel, near the Olympic Ski Area of Jahorina, in a wintry, totally snowed-in landscape. Pure white spruce forests with temperatures dipping down to -12 in the morning!
I thank my Greek colleagues Panayiota Maragou and Yannis Bazos for taking some of the following pics.
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Just to remember who was at this meeting:
Aljoša Duplić (State Institute for Nature Protection), Dejan Kulijer (National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Drazen Kotrosan (National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Geert De Knijf (Research Institute of Nature and Forest, INBO), Ioannis Bazos (University of Athens), Jörg Freyhof (iDiv), Krešimir Žganec (University of Zagreb), Marko Ćaleta (University of Zagreb), Panagiota Maragou (WWF Greece), Stamatis Zogaris (Hellenic Centre for Marine Research), Ulrich Eichelman (EuroNatur / River Watch Austria), Zoran Marčić (University of Zagreb), Zoran Mateljak (WWF Mediterranean Programme), William Darwall (IUCN), Savrina Carrizo (IUCN) and Violeta Barrios (IUCN). Many thanks to all of you!
And here is the report that IUCN produced from this and other workshops in the Mediterranean:
Darwall, W., Carrizo, S., Numa, C., Barrios, V., Freyhof, J. and Smith, K. (2014). Freshwater Key Biodiversity
Areas in the Mediterranean Basin Hotspot: Informing species conservation and development planning in freshwater
ecosystems. Cambridge, UK and Malaga, Spain: IUCN. x + 86pp.
