GREECE FEARS FIRES HIT RARE ANIMALS AND PLANTS
09.3.07 - Leído 140 veces. Enviar esta notaRobin Pomeroy
The thousands of Greek villagers forced to escape flames that raged across Greece over the last week were not the only ones on the run
ATHENS, Greece; September 3, 2007.- Animals also fled for their lives and conservationists fear that, like the 63 human victims of the worst forest fires in memory, many of them did not make it to safety.
Vast tracts of forest have been destroyed by the blazes, reducing living space and hunting grounds for wildlife and creating longer-term environmental hazards.
“We don’t know what’s happened to the golden jackals, whether they died or had a chance to get away,” said Dimitris Karavellas of WWF (World Wildlife Fund) Greece.
Although not an endangered species globally, the jackals, with their reddish-yellow fur, were a key part of the fauna in the rugged mountains of the Peloponnese peninsula, a unique eco-system which will take years to recover from the fires.
The chunk of southern Greece, which is effectively an island as it is cut from the mainland by the Corinth canal, contains some of Greece’s most valued natural landscapes.
“It’s not totally burned, but because space there is restricted, for animals like foxes and rabbits, there is nowhere for them to go,” said Greenpeace’s Nikos Charalambides.
With some fires still burning and the immediate priorities restoring power and housing thousands of homeless, no one has yet assessed the extent of the damage, but conservationists said they feared some rare species might have been wiped out.
“A big part of Mount Taygetos has burned,” Charalambides said, referring to the Peloponnese mountain range which rises to 2,404 metres (7,887 ft) above sea level.
“It’s seen as one of the jewels, one of our most important forest areas and it has 21 endemic species of plants which are not found anywhere else in the world.”
Vast swathes of pine forest, home to birds of prey and wild boar were also razed by the flames. That is not just bad news for the animals who lived there, but might also pose an on-going environmental risk.
Kalamata, a city which gave its name to the dark olives which remain an agricultural staple of the region, could be at risk of flooding now that the vegetation which once absorbed rainwater in the nearby mountains has gone, said Charalambides.
The area might also suffer changes to its local micro-climate, he said.
“The green used to cool the area and spread humidity, now there’s just a black box which will absorb heat by day and let it out at night, making life tougher for people who live there.”
For the wildlife, the one good news from the fires is that local authorities have banned hunting in what is usually peak season in order to spare the surviving creatures any further carnage.
GREEK FOREST FIRES COULD BE CO2 THREAT
Usually it is cars, factories and power stations that are most often mentioned as sources of carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas which traps heat in the atmosphere. Trees, considered the “lungs of the planet”, soak the gas up. But what if they burn?
“Global emissions from deforestation and the degradation of forests are the second single source after coal,” said Stefan Singer of WWF (the World Wildlife Fund).
Every year 13 million hectares of the world’s forests disappear — an area the size of Greece — according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation which says deforestation accounts for 18 percent of CO2 emissions.
Although paling in significance next to deforestation in the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia, forest fires in the Mediterranean might also be a net source of emissions, experts said.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and climatologists see forests as carbon “sinks” — places where large amounts of that element are stored. When they burn, whether in forest fires or as logs in a stove, it is released.
In the atmosphere, CO2 is the main gas which contributes to the greenhouse effect — trapping the earth’s heat which would otherwise be radiated into space.
The latest UN report on global warming says temperatures will rise by a best estimate of 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres.
CAUSE AND EFFECT
The resulting hotter, drier summers in countries like Greece could mean forests are more frequently brought to the tinder-box conditions which allowed fires to spread so devastatingly.
Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanni said the summer’s devastating floods in Britain and the worst fires in Greek memory demonstrated climate change was already happening.
“From that moment everyone understood that the phenomena caused by climatic change need to be confronted with much more coordination and speed from the EU,” she told a news conference.
Scientists said it was too early to judge how much C02 was released by the Greek fires which are the most intense in Europe in at least a decade and have killed 63 people.
If the trees grow back, they will eventually reabsorb the CO2. “If not, the fires will have contributed to greenhouse gas emissions,” said Earl Saxon of the Geneva-based World Conservation Union (IUCN).
Bakoyanni tried to allay fears that the scorched land would be used for building. “We are determined that not the smallest piece of land will not be reforested. Nobody will build on burnt land,” she said.
Any net loss of CO2 would not count against Greece’s legal obligation to control greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, Greece, was allowed to increase its emissions by 25 percent over 1990 levels. Non man-made sources, such as wildfires do not count.
The IUCN’s Saxon said forests have a natural cycle of fires and regrowth but that global warming could upset the balance. If hotter and drier summers mean more frequent forest fires, that could well mean a net emission of CO2.
“If they become more frequent, then vegetation doesn’t have time to grow back and the net effect is that you lose more carbon from the eco-system than the eco-system can recapture before the next fire.”
(Reuters)
Enlaces Relacionados
