Back to Western Canada

June 2025

I'm back in my old haunts in Vancouver and surroundings. I was born and raised here, so I have a feeling of home. I have friends and family here. Nature is familiar here. 

Some general thoughts 

I was living in Vancouver, in a different time phase of its history and I can now appreciate many changes. Some are really quite fascinating. The country is not in a positive situation economically or culturally; an increase of tourism is not good; it shows. And it is not all nice and sleek. 

Gentrification and the loss of a lot of authentic aspects is obvious to me. And also the localized 'overtourism and overdevelopment' of some really spectacular locales saddens me. But is'nt that the case everywhere where outstanding beauty meets easy accessibility? 

Some points of interest, places we visited:

We stayed only 13 days, and its been 10 years since my last visit; we had a lot of seeing-visiting to to do:  

-Maplewood Flats Conservation Area. Really had a deep interest in its conservation - restoration history and prospects. 

-New Brighton Park in East Vancouver has developed very nicely after the restoration project which began nearly 10 years ago. 

-Jericho ponds at Jericho Park (Kitsilano). Water levels low, but this place still rocks - bunnies and all. 

-Lost lagoon and Stanley Park. Very crowded with tourists on both days we visited in early June. Still an amazing location and park environment in the middle of this beautiful city. 

-Hastings Park restoration (pond creation) at the former PNE grounds in East Vancouver. A fantastic locale after 26 years of its restoration initiative. 

- We did a tour visiting collaborators and investigating places and projects: Victoria - Manning Provincial Park - Southern Okanagan (Lakes Osoyoos and Vaseux, White Lake, etc)- Canadian Rockies Parks (Vermillion Lakes and riparian area at Banff) - Eagle Creek at Malakwa (near Sicamous), etc.. 

I was really happy to see how birds can be used as indicators of conservation within and near the urban enviornment. It was quite fascinating to see changes in some of these areas, and from my recall, some interesting changes in the breeding avifauna. 

Met old friends, made some new ones, saw my family. Happy to be back!

And I will be back again soon.

Some people and place photos (All photos by S. Zogaris and D. Zogaris)

NEW BRIGHTON RESTORATION PROJECT - EAST VANCOUVER

MAPLEWOOD FLATS CONSERVARTION AREA - NORTH VANCOUVER

WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

SOME SNAPSHOTS OF BIRDS

TRIP DETAILS

This is one of our short road trips during the stay in Canada. Its a good trip to do as a starter but..Anyway. Ok we spent first night at Manning Park Resort (!!!), Coast Oliver Hotel (!!), Peaks Resort in Banff (keep away from Banff town) and then one at Crazy Creek Hot Spring Resort (!!!). So that's four nights and five days driving long distances - we came back via the Coquihalla Highway to make it faster. It was not your best nature trip since it was to fast to really see anything and National Park in Alberta was not worth it.

Observed 112 species; contributed 45 checklists on eBird. 

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/

View from the small walk-bridge at Karamanlis Park. 

Drone photo during one of our gatherings on-site. 

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/

Kenya in January 2025

 Kenya January, 2025

Conservation, ecotourism and birding (avitourism) have a close relationship in Kenya. 

The whole story sounds like a joyous one, its long and complicated, and growing! 

Of course, being a conservation scientist, I find the experiance of visiting Kenya with Kenyan experts invaluable. This time we spent a wonderful six days familiarization trip and explored some of these important conservation aspects. We were participating in a project to explore citizen science promotion in protected areas and wetland areas. This work follows our first trip in Kenya in 2024 (which I detailed with 8 posts on this blog...use 'search' button - 'Kenya' - to find them on this blog...).

JANUARY 2025 TRIP   

Some points on ecotourism development in this country that I find interesting:

-      Birding is amazing in Kenya (as it is in other East African countries I guess). Species diversity is high and fantastic-looking birds, many amazing non-passerines, are easy to see espeically in open areas and wetlands.

-      In my prespective, birding is not well promoted despite the presence of an excellent revised field guide book to East Africa, many eBird hotspots, many easy birds to see in combination with game spotting. Most tourism targets protected areas such as National Parks and private conservancies.

-      Many great birds are outside the NPs or other protected areas; but, there is no need to stay at the very pricey game lodges if you are on a budget. Tropical nature is everywhere if  you can plan carefully.

-   The open-cover (open habitat) protected areas and the typical game-spotting experiance also produce amazing bird lists. The vehicle is a 'hide' and you traverse extensive areas with constant stops; its a great birding introduction and incredibly easy to see lots of species up close. (Most people are looking mostly at large mammals; but they inevitablly see birds, some are shocked by the birds!). However, again, birds are not the main target...can this change?

Of course its not just birds and mammals, there are so many other biodiversity interests in this country, and the landscape and the agro-pastoral cultures. It is very interesting to me because in some way it the landscapes do have similarities to Mediterranean landscapes (i.e., goat/cattle grazing/ wood-gathering/ occupational wildfire influences). 

Kenya Fam Trip 2025 details

First you may ask what a Fam trip is? A Familiarization trip for me is a field-based trip where me and my team participate in order to learn, collaborate, experience and think about what to do together with local experts on research items of common interest. It is like going ot a conference but with very specific targets on the research theme. This was my second trip to Kenya. Again we discovered that a self-guided trip of only 6 days can be extremely interesting for the naturalists involved. We found that a short-trip, a familiraization-educational trip like this can bequite easily done. However it needs a lot of preparation, pre-trip preparation. 

These are the areas we visited this year:

·         Kuranguru Coffee Estate near Thika (farm ponds and coffee plantations)

·         Chania Falls at Blue Post Hotel and associated river habitats

·         Great Sagana Resort (and the upper tributary of the great Tana River)

·         Naro Moru Area (specifically near the Tree Hyrax Guesthouse and surroundings)

·         Ol Pejeta Conservancy

·         Mount Kenya National Park (Naro Moru Route Park Gate Area)

·         Nyahururu Area

·         Lake Nakuru National Park

·         Southern Part of Lake Elementeita

·         Lake Naivasha (northeastern shore only)

·         Mungo Swamp (near Limuru)

·         Nairobi National Park

This is our circuit loop taken in January 2025. This was organized intentionally to be comparable with the circuit loop of 2024. We counted birds at each of the 19 sites we visited using eBird as a citizen science platform. Our work is supported through invitation by a member of the National Museums of Kenya.

Some snapshots follow:

Lake Nakuru. This is near the airport landing strip where you can get out of the car and sit under the Yellow Fever Trees. Total bliss.

Lake Nakuru: African Harrier-hawk - Polyboroides typus, one of Africa's many amazing and unique raptors.

Lesser Flamingos at Lake Nakuru.

The morning scene at the southern edge of Lake Nakuru.

Inspecting agricultural wetlands at one of the coffee farm near Thika. Warmest thanks to the staff of Kuranguru Coffee Estate.

At the Blue Post Hotel at Thika you can get up close to wild monkeys such as this one. This is a good place to see wild (habituated to human presence) Kolb's Monkey (Cercopithecus mitis kolbi) a rather rare range-restricted subspecies. This is a species is related to Sykes' Monkey that is more widespread (according to iNaturalist mapping). 

The Tree Hyrax Guesthouse on the lower slopes of Mount Kenya. This is a good base for the agro-pastoral and forest landscapes on the western slopes of the mountain.  

Western slopes of Mouny Kenya, at the National Park Gate (Naro Moru Park Gate Area). An amazing place but it is potentially dangerous to walk like this due to buffalo presence. We stayed close to the main road. This was frowned upon by the local rangers, and I understand why. Best to be in the company of a trained ranger in such situations. Despite the risk, we say some fantastic birds and also o herd of water buck (these big red deer sized animals showed some alarm and actually approached us a bit; as if perhaps to shoo us off...).  

Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Wild elephants; these are my first.

This is our first lion sighting. You will not easily see lions in Kenya. We did not do lion tracking or have a  safari guide with us. But we were looking hard, especially at this wonderful place, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

This is NOT something I would ever do and I guess my partner is OK with this photo and I wil show it to give you a sense of the road-side situation in Central Kenya. In many areas away from official protected areas you see antelope and zebras and sometimes they are really not wary of people. These are wild animals and potentially dangerous. They are oblivious of people more than scared or approachable. Please stay at a safe distance if you are not aware of the local tempermant of the animals. They are wild. (Photo is from the wonderful landscapes around Lake Elementaita).

This is Manguo Swamp, a well-known birding hotspot west of Nairobi (and yes, the donkeys are domesticated). Although it’s an important wetland, it’s not nearly as peaceful as this photo makes it appear—there are people around almost constantly. If you decide to visit, please be cautious with your car, valuables, and personal safety. We were approached by a group of young men who seemed more than just curious, and we fortunately managed to get back to our car and leave quickly.

Worldwide, there is no other place I know where a capital metropolis is so close to wildlife.

Lioness at Nairobi N.P. (We were so fortunate to find her on an intermittent stream-bed sunning herself). She was totally oblivious to the jeep.  

Vassiliki Vlami and our researcher friends at Nairobi N.P.

Nairobi National Park. Of course we were interested in the landscape. Note the grazing patterns (and despite the lack of elephants here). 

With our research friends at the Athi river in Nairobi N.P. 

Nairobi National Park is something of a pilgrimage area for urban naturalists. I can honestly say that if you have just a few days, you can easily visit from Europe and just ramble around Nairobi; this N.P. is a must for anyone visiting. 

I highly recommend this family business for rental cars, please inquire here: Kompact safaris Kenya car hire | budget friendly Kenya car hire/ self drive 4x4 Nairobi

Extirpation Confirmed: No Pungitius Sticklebacks at Kokartza Wetland!

 

November 2024

Kokartza Kilkis, Northern Greece

Kokartza Kilkis is a tiny hamlet of 30 souls in the middle of the Kilkis steppe in Central Macedonia, not far from Thessaloniki. This could be a rather famous place for Greek ichthyology. It was here that the late Professor P.S. Economidis discovered one of two Northern Greek populations of a fish similar to the Southern Nine-Spine Stickleback (Pungitius aff. platygaster). In fact there are two Pungitius stickleback taxons in Greece, the southern population, at the Spercheios valley which was initially named Pungitius hellenicus (published by Stephanidis in 1971), and the northern population (at Aravissos- in the Loudias system and Kokartza- in the Axios/Vardar valley). Yes the northern ones are considered similar to the other European/Ponto-Caspian ones, loosely named Pungitius platygaster. 

However there is a important note: Both sticklebacks (the northern Greek and Spercheios populations) are genetically more closely related to each other then the Southern Nine-back Sticklebacks, the "true" Pungitius platygaster! 

The map above from an old Sovient publication shows the wide range of the Pungitius platygaster populations (related to the more widespread Pungitius pungitius) and I have incerted (in red) two areas of the Greek populations Pungitius. These two dots are the Pungitius aff. platygaster in Northern Greece (Aravissos and Kokartza) and Pungitius hellenicus in the Spercheios Valey near Lamia in Central Eastern Greece.

Thanks to research being done by Alcibiades Economou and colleagues, we are still trying to figure out the biogeography, genetic relationships and species status of these tiny fishes. Although the two populations have diverged from other Pungitius they are also quite distinct units. Perhaps even to the species level, i.e. two species, distinct from Pungitius platygaster, both originating from it.  In this posting I am refering to our northern Greek fish as Pungitius aff. platygaster for the first time. (The tiny word "aff" or Species affinis" is a term used in biological taxonomy to mean that a proposed species is closely related to, but not the same as, the species listed after it. The Latin word "affinis" translates to "closely related to" or "akin to). With the recent genetic analyses available, perhaps we could call the northern populations Pungitius aff. hellenicus or it may be described as a new species in the future! 

Anyway, the Northern Greek Sticklebacks are still being officially called Southern Nine-Spines, Pungitius platygaster, pending a thorough review and wider genetic analysis. And we are assessing their conservation status based on their distribution within Greece (I did the IUCN Greek Red List review recently). Note that the other Northern Greek Pungitius population is restricted to Aravissos springs, part of the Loudias-Lake Gianitsa system, neighbouring to the west of the Axios valley. It would be great if we could get some genetic material from Kokartza.

So the question is: do they still exist in Kokartza? 

We needed to go to Kokartza village! Where we too late? (...2024 was an exceptional drought year). Maybe we overlooked the issue and we may not have persisted in asking Economidis about this earlier. If I recall correctly, P.S. Economidis had told Alcibiades Economou and I that he had searched elsewhere in the Axios Valley and found it nowhere. However, in the 2008 Greek Red Data book account he gives the impression that it was extant at Kokartza; he gives Kokartza as a 'point on the map' (Economidis and Chrysopolitou 2008).  

Of course using Google Earth you can easily find both the Kokartza hamlet and its tiny reedswamp wetland where the spring's 'well' located (right next to the pump house). We decided to visit late this November. 

The Landscape

The 'Well'

Professor Economidis talks about a 'filthy well' when refering to Kokartza - the only place the species exists in the wetland of Kokratza. During our visit we found no drop of water in the sourrounding tiny Phragmites reedswamp and two rather modern-looking well-like structures; one deeper - the round one and one very shallow, a rectangular cistern. Locals said that long ago this was a cold water spring and was known as a drinking-water source. There is a pump-house next to the well.

We used a long dip-net to try to see if there was any life in the two well-like structures. In the very shallow rectangular cistern we found nothing but a toad (Bufo bufo). No invertebrates in the water. The concrete block hatch on top had toppled down and  light was now penetrating into the shallow cistern. But there was no aquatic vegetaion. An animal (mammal) was scurring inside, but we did not find it. We rescued the toad. 

The large round well is deep and we could not search that deeper water with the dip net. We did several attempts of dip netting in the upper part near the surface and along the walls. No plants of course in the water - this well is totally covered by concrete, no light penetrates.  The top was totally sealed save for a small opening bolted with a heavy concrete block. We removed the concrete block to investigate. We thrashed around with the dip net. We found nothing, no life, no insect or other invertebrate life. The water body recived no light. It had a murky blue hue, not clear. Nothing. 

Perhaps this confirms extirpation of the Kokartza Pungitius population. But we will proabably make another pilgrimage to this site again in the near future. 

Dedication

I dedicate this post to the remarkable man behind the name of P.S. Economidis (1934-2021). One of the most interesting men I have ever met and a remarkable natural historian. I knew him very little, but on and off called on him during a period of about 20 years. We went on a few trips together (Evia, Rhodes, Northern Greece, etc).  We liked each other, but he was a 'difficult' man and many people would be cruel to him, or maybe they would misinerpret him. I guess he was mad at the world. He was protective of his data. Many colleagues were probably envious of his strong mind and incredible memory and the deptsh of his natural history knowledge. I kept notes on nearly all my discussions with him. He was also a philosopher and a Patriot; a kind of wonderful Zorba The Greek of the Icthyological world. May he Rest in Peace. 

References

Economidis, P. S. "Endangered freshwater fishes of Greece." Biological Conservation 72, no. 2 (1995): 201-211.

Economidis, P.S. and Chrysopolitou, V (2008). Pungitius platygaster. Red Data Book of Threatened Animals. 

Economidis, P.S. & V.P. Voyadjis. (1985). Les poissons des systèmes d'Axios-Doirani et de Gallikos (Macédoine, Grèce). Biologia Gallo-Hellenica, 10: 89-93.

Wang, Y., Wang, Y., Zhao, Y., Kravchenko, A.Y., Merilä, J. and Guo, B., (2022). Phylogenomics of northeast Asian Pungitius sticklebacks. Diversity and Distributions, 28(12), pp.2610-2621.