Love your wildlife

Local Life

by Julien Pablo

Do you know the National Park of Axios ?

Near to Thessaloniki, The National Park of Axios is an important place for wildlife thanks to its unique ecosystem due to a good combination of three rivers that meet the Delta and finally end up in the Gulf of Thessaloniki. This region shows a huge biodiversity, especially a huge variety of birds. You can meet shorebirds and seabirds in the same place.

Here, I met Penelope from the NGO Action For Wildlife. I asked her to explain to me what the organisation does and something more about the local wildlife.

“We are Action for WildLife, an NGO that runs a wildlife hospital. We are situated in North Greece. We receive injured and offended wild animals with any problem from all of North Greece, the island and central Greece. Our main purpose is to take care of them in order to be released into nature.” - Penelope

Action for WildLife is a local organisation relying on volunteer work so most of the people working here do it for free. Ten people work everyday in the facility to save these animals’ lives and some volunteers come once or twice per month to transfer animals or bring food. In total, around thirty people support the organisation in some way.

Action for WildLife ©

They also receive volunteers from all around the world through different programs: some come independently to help and others are recruited through the European Solidarity Corps program.

© Pixabay - free for commercial usage - Attribution no required

Why is this shelter important ?

“It is really important, because it’s the only one in North Greece. There are just few other places with this kind of facilities, mainly located in South Greece, Athens or even further. Because there are just very few places that can treat wild animals, most of the time people just leave them to die because normal veterinarians don’t know how to treat them. They cannot help them because very special knowledge is needed.

So we have a veterinarian and biologist that have experience on wild animals working with us. People who bring here an animal they found injured have the opportunity to understand what happened to it and learn that it’s often human fault if an animal is injured.

There are so many things people can do to help: for example putting stickers on the windows, so the birds don’t fly towards them, it’s very simple but not everybody knows that. It’s a very simple step that can give a huge help to wildlife.”

In the purpose to educate people on what they can do, the staff also visits schools and organise field trips to the facilities. They explain to children what they do and how they can help to save wild animals.

It’s also important to protect the National Park of Axios because it’s a very important ecosystem for various species like ducks, pelicans, and herons which nest in this specific area. The park is also a destination of migratory birds that stop here and can be admired during certain times of the year. The population of some of them is reducing: for example the number of storks is decreasing because of the rice fields. More fields mean more pesticides and because of them animals have to leave and move their nest because they cannot find the food to sustain themselves.

Flamingos taking flight from a lagoon near the Loudias Estuary

© Agorastos Papatsanis / Axios-Loudias-Aliakmonas Delta National Park

How many animals do you take care of in a day ?

“In winter we have around 250 animals, in summer more than 500. June and July are the worst months, we can receive even twenty or thirty new animals per day. This is because from May to August they start the reproductive period and the babies are more vulnerable. So we get a lot of baby birds and mammals that fall from the nests. They’re often injured or they lost their parents and it’s impossible to get them back to the nest.

It also takes a lot of time because if you have a baby, you need at least one or two months to get them bigger and to be released. It’s also a big procedure, because it’s not only to feed, but also to see if they can fly or walk.

It’s important to teach them how they will survive, because that is something that their parents show them in a normal situation. But in this case we need to do it and it is difficult, so it needs a procedure to rehabilitation in steps and this takes a lot of time.”

It’s important to take the habit of taking care of wild animals. We often think of the endangered species but we rarely think about the other species and at the end we forget them.

“We get rare birds too, for example we have a black stork here with us. They are quite vulnerable, the population is getting really reduced. So for some species that come here to be treated and get back to the wild it’s really significant to be healed in order to avoid the risk of extinction.

Common species are hosted too, like the doves: when someone brings a dove, which of course it’s not an endangered species, they can still understand why these animals are vulnerable and why it’s really important to educate people about it. Even if they found a common animal it’s really important for people to come here and understand their important role in the ecosystem.

So now when you see a wild animals injured on the street or anywhere please take care of them., if can’t help them directly, think about organisations like Action for WildLife, because:

“Everybody can do something, everybody can help wildlife. You don’t have to come here to help, there are many things you can do in everyday life. Show that you care for the environment and nature. It’s important nowadays especially in this moment when everything is so vulnerable.”

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