Almost a year after Greece’s second largest island, Euboea, was devastated by some of the worst wildfires in the country’s history, nature is slowly returning.
Grass grows on blackened mountainsides beneath the corpses of burnt trees, and birds sing again.
And while the forests and meadows that once produced some of Greece’s best honeys will likely take two decades to recover, experts say the best method is to let nature do the heavy lifting.
“There is a rebirth, better in some places than others,” Nikos Georgiadis of World Wildlife Fund Greece told AFP.
In two weeks last August, more than 46,000 hectares in Euboea – 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Athens – went up in smoke, devastating homes, pine forests, olive groves, beehives and livestock after a prolonged heatwave.
– apocalyptic –
Thousands of locals and tourists fled the north of the island amid apocalyptic scenes, with authorities forced to conduct a mass evacuation to avoid a repeat of the 2018 fire near Athens that killed over 100 people.
Three people died in Greek wildfires last year during a brutal summer across much of southern Europe from Spain to France, Italy, Croatia and Cyprus. Blazes also claimed lives in Turkey and Algeria.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather and fierce fires will become more common due to man-made global warming, and Greece’s conservative prime minister has linked the blazes to climate change.
After the destruction in Euboea, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has pledged hundreds of millions of euros for reconstruction, reforestation and flood control, as well as a €1.7 billion overhaul of the civil protection agency.
– Let nature grow –
Forester Elias Apostolidis, whose company is involved in the state’s recovery plan, said inspections so far have shown little human intervention is required for regrowth.
The hardest-hit areas – about five percent of the area burned – will be replanted with seeds collected elsewhere on the island, he told AFP.
The fact that destruction was so complete in some areas also allows rangers to replant with more fire-resistant trees.
“We recorded the percentage of plants per species that survived,” Apostolidis said.
For example, only 6 percent of black pine was saved compared to 42 percent of broadleaf oak, he said.
“This means that some plants are more resilient than others. We now practically know how forests behave in relation to fire and we need to take this into account in the future so that we can make them more resilient to fire,” he said.
But it will take “nearly 20 to 25 years” for the forest to be restored, WWF’s Georgiadis said, provided the area is not grazed and not hit by another wildfire.
Prime Minister Mitsotakis pledged to “rebuild North Euboea better and more beautifully than it was” and announced a €500 million aid package for the region.
The state has already cleared unsavable trees in some hard-hit areas and has begun infrastructure work to support reforestation and prevent soil erosion and flash flooding.
– ‘We’re done’ –
But for many locals it is already too late.
Giannis Dimou, a 66-year-old herder, lost more than 60 animals and his three goat pens in the fire.
He only has a dozen animals now, not enough to keep him in business.
And because his pens weren’t fully licensed, he wasn’t eligible for government aid.
“You can’t do anything with so few animals,” he said. “We’re done.”
Equally dire is the situation for beekeepers on an island that was home to around 40 percent of the national honey production.
“The area’s beekeepers are facing major problems and essentially they will not be able to collect honey from the area for years” and will have to move elsewhere, said Stathis Albanis, president of the Istiaia Beekeepers’ Cooperative.
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