The griffon vulture in the canyon of the Uvac river, the row of oak trees in the Upper Danube region and blooming water lilies in the Revi pond are part of the colorful mosaic of Serbia's biodiversity.
This biological diversity consists of plants, animals and other organisms, as well as genetic variability and ecosystems.
"We have to do something as soon as possible because most of the species that we consider endangered today will disappear, only the economically important and attractive ones will remain - wild game, some fish and the griffon vulture," says Doctor of Biological Sciences Saša Marinković for the BBC in Serbian.
"And we should preserve some frogs, snakes or flowers that are not so attractive, but are significant."
Despite several examples of good practice, nature protection in Serbia, as well as in the region, encounters numerous obstacles and problems.
"In nature protection, it is important to have good planning but also continuity, and the best indicators are the current state of species and habitats," says Ivana Vasić from the company Vojvodinašume, for the BBC in Serbian.
It is in Serbia officially registered about 44.200 species and subspecies, but many groups of organisms have not been sufficiently researched, and it is believed that there are more of them, about 60.000.
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Griffon vulture: Symbol of nature protection of endangered species
The flight of the griffon vulture over its home, the canyons and gorges of the Uvac and Trešnjica rivers in the west and southwest of Serbia, was almost interrupted thirty years ago.
In 1992, the population of this species of large vulture was reduced to only 10 pairs.
"It was considered a done deal and the species was lost, but I didn't give up.
"I started researching the factors that affect them and came to the conclusion that the main cause is the lack of food during the winter period," Saša Marinković explains.
He says that the decline in the number of griffon vultures started a few decades ago, when many individuals died in hunting actions by poisoning wolves, jackals and other predators.
The increase in the population of griffon vultures was due to the establishment of the special nature reserve "Uvac" in 1995 and the implementation of a program of protection measures "based on his master's thesis", which gave good results.
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Soon they also built a feeding ground - a place where dead cattle will be taken out, which makes up almost 95 percent of the menu of this strictly protected species.
"Today, three percent of the total livestock waste reaches the vultures, and if they raised it to 10 percent, they would completely preserve it, although we think we have already preserved it," adds Marinković.
It is estimated that there are currently 260 couples living in Serbia, "the most in the Balkans".
In addition to Uvac and Trešnjica, there are also griffon vultures in the gorge of the Mileševka river, where they appeared in 1995, probably having flown in from war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina, and new colonies were also recorded near Pribojska banja, Brodarevo and Zlatibor.
"We can say that the griffon vulture has become a symbol of the protection of endangered species," emphasizes Marinković.
The next step in the preservation and improvement of the population and habitat of this attractive species is its resettlement in eastern Serbia, specifically in the Sićevačka gorge, about fifteen kilometers from Niš, where it once lived.
Balkan lynx: The struggle for survival
Since 2006, a Balkan lynx conservation project has been ongoing in Kosovo, eastern Albania and western parts of North Macedonia.
"We are currently working on strengthening the population due to the main threat - inbreeding," says biologist Dime Melovski, from the Macedonian Ecological Society.
"Before that, we mostly focused on conventional threats like poaching, forest degradation and predation."
In addition, they are also working on estimating the size and density of the population in the central area, Mavrovo National Park, in the northwest of the country, as well as on educating students and training hunters and gamekeepers in the area where the largest cat in the Balkans lives.
"We are also advocating for new protected areas that are important for the lynx and during our program, several were declared," explains Melovski.
The habitat of the Balkan lynx in this part of Europe covers between 6.000 and 7.000 square kilometers.
Estimates are that there are between 30 and 40 mature individuals.
Milica Mišković from the International Union for the Protection of Nature, an organization that participates in the Balkan lynx conservation program through a project to reforest its habitat, says that the problem is that there are two physically separate groups.
One is in the Macedonian National Park "Mavrovo" and the other in the Albanian "Munela".
"The forests in this area have been destroyed to such an extent that there is not enough connected forest habitat for these animals to move freely between the two protected areas.
"Isolated populations do not have a good chance to reproduce and increase in number," Mišković told the BBC in Serbian.
After the preparatory work is completed, the restoration of forests on the Bukovik mountain in North Macedonia and the Pastrik mountain in Albania is underway.
What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity is in the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. defined as the comprehensive diversity and diversity of living organisms.
"This implies diversity within species, between species and between ecosystems," it states.
Biodiversity thus consists of plant and animal species and other organisms, as well as genetic variability and ecosystems, i.e. living communities and habitats where they live and perform their own functions.
Protection of biodiversity today it represents the backbone of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations and is included in the Paris Agreement - a global agreement to combat climate change.
Belgrade oases awaiting protected property status
During 2023, three studies were carried out in the vicinity of Belgrade with the proposal that certain areas become protected habitats, according to the Institute for Nature Protection of Serbia.
"A protected habitat is an area that includes one or more types of natural habitats important for the preservation of one or more populations of wild species and their communities," it says in to the Law on Nature Protection.
These are "Bara Reva", "Bela reka - Ripanj" and "Glinara".
The battle for the Reva bar has begun May 2021 when protests were organized so that this oasis, located less than 10 kilometers from the center of Belgrade, along the right bank of the Danube in the Krnjača settlement, would not turn into a rubble dump.
Its waters are home to 147 species of birds, 25 of which nest there, as well as dozens of species of insects, including the strictly protected species of butterfly - the large butterfly and the hard-winged butterfly.
"The added value is represented by the strictly protected and protected species of amphibians and reptiles, which are listed in the Red Data Book of the fauna of Serbia due to their threat," stated Verica Stojanović and Miloš Radaković from the Institute for Nature Protection of Serbia in a written response to the BBC in Serbian.
Some of them are the great Danube marmot, the common and eastern woodpecker, the small green frog, the pond turtle and the steppe skunk.
145 species of plants were also recorded, of which three are protected: St. John's wort, St. John's wort and comfrey, and two are strictly protected: white and yellow water lilies.
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About 25 kilometers from the center of Belgrade, in the Ripanj settlement, there is an artificial lake called Bela Reka, which, with the surrounding forest complex, also pending status protected property of the third category.
More than 40 types of medicinal plants grow here, twenty of which are protected, and the same number of macrofungi, among which two are also protected: purple-green rabbit and pigeon mushroom.
Probably the first among the equal inhabitants of this area is the red deer, an insect from the order of hardwings, strictly protected in Serbia but also according to international annexes.
"As the species is recorded in high numbers, 'Bela Reka' can be considered one of the centers of the deer population, so the preservation of forests is also of great importance," added Stojanović and Radaković.
Different species of amphibians live in the surrounding forest, on the shore of the lake and in the water, and there are also more than 40 species of birds, 27 species of mammals and 13 wild species of fish from eight families, including carp, catfish, chub and others.
Protection procedure was launched at the end of 2023 for Glinara, an area on the southern edge of the Pannonian basin in the Belgrade settlement of Višnjica, near the right bank of the Danube.
"53 species of plants, 65 species of insects, seven species of amphibians, seven species of reptiles and 55 species of birds have been recorded here," according to the Institute for Nature Protection of Serbia.
In this mecca for birds, the strictly protected bee-eater, grebe and black grouse nest, and six species from the European Directive on the conservation of wild birds have also been recorded: black and white storks, hornbills, white-tailed eagles, hornbills, country woodpeckers and golden sparrowhawks.
'Europe's Amazon'
The Mura, Drava and Danube rivers formed a 700 kilometer long green corridor which, since September 2017, enrolled on the World List of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves.
This international biosphere reserve stretches through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Serbia on an area of 931.820 hectares, which is why it is also called the European Amazon.
Part of this ecological unit, the first of its kind in the world, which connects "almost a million hectares of precious natural and cultural heritage", is the Serbian biosphere reserve - Bačko Podunavlje.
It was entered in the World List of Biosphere Reserves in June 2017 and covers more than 176.000 hectares, entering the borders of the Vojvodina cities of Sombor, Apatin, Odžak, Bača and Bačka Palanka.
It includes several protected areas, including the Special Nature Reserves "Upper Podunavlje" and "Karađorđevo".
"We worked on the preservation of rare habitats such as salt marshes and ponds, and wet habitats, floodplain forests of willows, poplars, oaks and others, through the implementation of active protection measures, but also on the conversion, i.e., the replacement of forests of non-native species with autochthonous ones," explains Ivana. Vasić from Vojvodinašuma, the company that manages "Upper Danube".
More than 1.000 species of plants live in the area of "Upper Danube", including orchids, 270 species of birds, 60 species of fish and many other animals, such as red deer.
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The future for seabirds in the Lastovo Archipelago
One of the more recent successful examples of biodiversity protection in Croatia is the action to preserve the endangered seabirds of the Mediterranean seagull, great tern and gregul in the area of the central Adriatic.
The five-year project "LIFE Artina - Network for the conservation of seabirds in the Adriatic" lasted until March 2024 and covered the area of the Lastovo Archipelago and the Pučin Islands.
In 2019, the gregula numbered 91 pairs in this area, and three years later the number reached 569, while the great warbler rose from 96 to 369 pairs.
In the case of the Mediterranean gull, which is different from the sea gull, the results were not satisfactory, so from the initial 29 pairs it reached 35, so that in 2023 the number would be only 15.
The gregu and the great wagtail belong to the petrels or tube feet and are more closely related to penguins than to seagulls.
"This order also includes much larger albatrosses, and they are called so because they have tubes at the tip of their beaks, i.e. glands with which they excrete salt from seawater.
"So they are completely independent of fresh water sources and spend their whole lives at sea, they only come to the colonies on the islands when they are nesting," says biologist Sven Kapelj, one of the participants in the project, for the BBC in Serbian.
"These birds nest in places where there are no terrestrial mammals and predators because they have no built-in defense mechanism.
"They lay an egg and, when the bird hatches, they leave it alone for up to several days, and the parents go to the sea and come back to feed them, and then they are exposed to the danger of rats," Kapelj explains.
The removal of rats from the colonies was successfully carried out in cooperation with the "Lastovsko otočje" nature park, which manages this area and which continued to work according to jointly designed protocols.
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