In fact, Yale’s overall Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranked Turkey as 109 out of 132 countries this year, among what the EPI refers to as “weaker performers”. Instead of improving, Turkey’s environmental measures are declining: the country fell 32 spots since 2010.
“For a country whose economy is ranked as one of the top ten economies in the world, this failure to protect its natural heritage is embarrassing. This index shows again that global measures of development should not be solely based on monetary measures such as GDP, financial wealth, construction or dams,” Sekercioglu says in a press release.
But not all conservation news out of Turkey is bleak. The nation has just announced the establishment of its first wildlife corridor in the Kars region.
“Kars is reminiscent of Montana, Wyoming or Colorado in its climate, vegetation, and beautiful scenery consisting of mountains, wetlands, rivers, fields, meadows, and pine forests,” Sekercioglu wrote in an article for National Geographic.
“It is truly one of the undiscovered biocultural treasures of the world. Our NGO KuzeyDoga has been actively working with villagers in the region to establish locally-based biocultural tourism since 2006. As a result of our efforts, Kars was chosen the 2009 European Destination of Excellence (EDEN), a sustainable tourism award, given to precious but overlooked destinations like Kars,” Sekercioglu explained to mongabay.com. “The ‘Serhat’ provinces of Kars, Igdir, Ardahan and Agri combine the breathtaking natural, cultural, historical, landscape and culinary diversity of Turkey with amazing hospitality, traditional village life barely changed in centuries, and the pleasure of not having to share the spectacular mountains, forests, grasslands, lakes, and rivers with other visitors – only 1 out of 1000 international visitors to Turkey visit the region.”
Running for nearly 51 miles (82 kilometers) and covering 23,500 hectares of forest, the corridor will help a number of big carnivores, including bears, wolves, and lynx. The corridor has been pushed for four years by KuzeyDoga, of which Sekercioglu is president. The organization, in collaboration with Turkey’s General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks (GDNCNP), have conducted camera trap surveys of the wildlife in the region since 2006 and have begun the first tracking study of Turkey’s wolves.
“This is the biggest landscape-scale active conservation project ever to be undertaken in Turkey,” Sekercioglu says. “Our research since 2006 has shown the isolated Sarikamis-Allahuekber National Park to hold critical, breeding populations of brown bears, wolves, lynx and wild cats. However, this park is only 230 square kilometers whereas the wolves we tracked covered over 3000 square kilometers in only 3 months. In addition, only a quarter of the park is forest, whereas most of the old-growth forest is outside the park and is actively logged by public and private entities. The corridor will more than double the area of the national park and will connect the important populations of these large, keystone carnivores to the much larger forests and carnivore populations in the Caucasus mountains of northeastern Turkey and neighboring Georgia. By extending all the way to Georgia’s forests, the corridor will also promote trans-boundary conservation in the region. We also hope that the corridor will draw attention to the region’s rich wildlife, publicize the biocultural diversity of northeastern Turkey, and increase village-based wildlife tourism in the Kars region.”
The success of the corridor may point one way forward for burgeoning conservation efforts to safeguard Turkey’s long neglected, but stunning biodiversity.
[The above story is reproduced from materials provided by MONGABAY.COM. The original article is written by Jeremy Hance.]
