The killing of a birding hotspot: The Rafina Megalo Rema river

 

Rafina Megalo Rema River, Attika Greece

Since about the mid nighties naturalists have been aware of the Rafina Megalo Rema river and its characteristic river mouth area near the port of Rafina. 

It is a hotspot for wildlife watching near Athens. 

Unfortunately, the idea of a building a mega- anti-flood engineering project to supposedly protect against floods is now destroying 17 kms of this small river and the tiny wetland hotspot at the river's mouth. 

They, the politician responsible, the technocrat companies and their like, have absolutley no idea how easy it was to at least make some changes to their original scheme, to compromise for the sake of nature. The eBird hotspot at the river mouth is definately on the the top birding sites in Greece and a 'gateway experience' for families and youngsters to have contact with nature. I cannot experess how important it is, in words.

It should not be lost. 

What I could do is rant about this and just get all depressed, very easy. What I will do is direct you to a site that has the whole story and to some poeple that are doing their best to stop the catastrophe. I hope we can succeed. 

Hope never dies.

Have a look here: 

https://megalorema.gr/

Enigineering works in 2025! Deepening and narrowing the channel...

Rafina in the 1950s. The river valley and estuary of the Rafina Megalo Rema river-mout evident at Left. ...this my friends was 'The Greece of Yesterday' (in the late O. Rackham's words). 

Our proposal for the future, the vision in 2023; a plan to protect and restore the wetland within the City of Rafina. Above, the site in 2023; Below a future idea based on ecological restoration and wildlife habitat enhancement principles. 

Can we restore this temple back to its landscape? Temple of Apollo at Bassae, Peloponnese

 

The ancient Greek temples and their landscapes

Harry Eyres writes in Newsweek (Apr 19, 2015) about the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae in the Peloponnese:

“Since 1987 a huge, mournfully flapping and increasingly mouldy tent has covered the monument while complex restoration work is carried out.

Seeing the temple in this state on a cold March morning, nearly 40 years after being stunned by its bare, rugged magnificence, was the most shocking moment of a nostalgic trip to the Peloponnese with an old friend to revisit sites we had last inspected as schoolboy classicists. The venerable building seemed like a patient on life-support.

....everything was changed by the tent, interrupting the relationship with the landscape and the way the sanctuary emerges from it. You could not help feeling the shrouded, melancholy-looking temple was an emblem of the whole beleaguered country.

...How about this idea: European nations, in a gesture of goodwill, get together in providing a fund to hasten the works and ensure the speedy removal of the tent?”

Nikos Kazantzakis on this temple and its landscape:

“….And suddenly, at a turn of the mountain, the famous temple of Epicurious Apollo rises unexpectedly in front of him. Directly facing the cliff, shaped as it is with the same stones of the mountain, you feel the deep response of the landscape and the temple. Like a piece of the mountain, stone from its stone, the temple seems inseparably wedged between the rocks, a rock too, but a rock over which the spirit passed. The pillars of the temple, carved and placed in this way, express the essence of all this mountainous austerity and desolation. 

You are confident that it is the head of the landscape, of the sacred area, where its mind is kept, vigil, and protected. And here the ancient art, continuing and perfectly expressing the landscape, does not surprise you. Agility, calmness, from a human path takes you, without panting, to the top.”

Before 1987

After 1987

The article by the British journalist and author above was the first time I heard someone mentioning the need for landscape restoration: 'removal of the tent'. Something so obvious! 

Is there no landscape consciousness in this country?

The temple in the first years of the 19th century, Edward Dodwell.

But the Peloponnesian coverved temple is not the only case. The Archeological Service and Hellenic Minitry of Culture seems to have forgotten many a monument's tie with the landscape. 

Enter the Parthenon! 

This amazing building on the Acropolis of Athens. Probably one of the five or so wonders of the global archeological monuments of all time...It seems to be permanently “scarred” by the presence of scaffolding  and other engineering works....since the early 1980s. No end in sight! No reference to bringing the glory of the building and its landscape back. Very sad.

Before 1983

Recent years

We have seen wonderful success with protected archeological sites in this country. But, we can do better. 

We who teach and promote landscape appreciation in Greece would like to help. 

Photos in this post are from internet sources; I appreciate their contribution. The last landscape photo from the hill of Pnyx with the view of the Acropolis of Athens is from College Year in Athens (CYA). https://cyathens.org/