Turkish Conservation

Since 2006, my colleageus and I have been working to document and conserve the ecological communities throughout the eastern Anatolian region of Turkey. Due to the natural history of bird migrations, weather conditions, etc. I am forced to travel to Turkey while my CSUCI courses are in progress. I therefore post these podcasts both to bring our work to a wider audience and to demonstrate various conservation topics withi which my students are wrestling with back on our California campus.

My April and September 2008 trips to eastern Anatolia found us engaging in the first major expansion (Phase II) of our restoration efforts. My first year (2006) was primarily focused on gaining a broad overview of the region, the environmental stressors, and the potential for environmental rehabilitation. This was not easy as very little is known and even less reported in English-language reports or journal articles. Despite this challenge, by my April 2007 trip I had formulated the beginnings of a restoration plan for Turkish wetlands so essential to resident and migratory birds and initiated our first manipulative experiment in the region on the grounds of Kafkas University. The results of that first plant growth season (April to September of 2007) were striking and encouraged us to (in April of 2008) expand the grazer exclusions at Kafkas Wetland and begin the next phase of our restoration plan: manipulations at Kuyucuk Lake. September 2008 found us sampling the products of that first Kuyucuk manipulation and discussing our next step. We passed a major milestone in 2009 with our first in the nation/region of the planet Island Restoration wherein we severed a road bisecting our Kuyucuk Lake. Earlier in 2009, Lake Kuyucuk was formally declared a RAMSAR wetland of international importance site. We rounded out 2009 with an EDEN Award from the European Union for sustainable tourism. We continued to refine and monitor our experiments in 2010 as we faced a new series of threats: increased fragmentation, damming, and degradation of some relatively pristine sites by various development projects.