In dealing with the wildfire menace, we must focus on one important concept: prevention! Citizens and relevant institutions need an efficient framework that will help turn the will to protect forests into concrete action.

With that in mind and with the Forests for the Future program (in Greek) as our main vehicle, we worked to present proposals for an integrated forest protection system with active volunteer participation, to provide information on the current state of Greek forests and the use of Greek land, to educate civil society, to raise awareness and to promote environmental education. The comprehensive presentation (in Greek) of the program is more than informative.

In order to support volunteer groups and to create model practices, we carried out various pilot actions, such as: evaluating and providing assistance to 44 volunteer forest protection groups, organizing 5 forest firefighting workshops for 41 volunteer groups, as well as programs of voluntary forest fire-protection (fire-watch, patrols, pathway maintenance) in the mountain ranges of Grammos, Pindus and Taygetus and the island of Rhodes.

We stood by 44 volunteer forest firefighting groups.

© WWF Greece

At the same time, we cooperated with scientific groups in identifying and analyzing the challenges and problems of forest protection. Furthermore, we presented the most comprehensive information to date about forest fires, their causes and consequences throughout 10 volumes of reports (in Greek) and the integrated database Pyroskopio (in Greek) to assist relevant authorities and services in preventing and fighting forest fires.

Finally, to obtain a better understanding of forest protection issues, to further mobilize civil society and to promote environmental education, we created and employed material to raise awareness about preventing forest fires and restoring burnt areas. For more information visit Citizens for the Forests.