Team of "Land for LIFE" took part in an international conference in Hungary

From October 1st to October 5th, 2018, the VII European Ground Squirrel Meeting was held at the National Museum of Natural History in Budapest (Hungary).

The conference was attended by 92 environmentalists and experts from scientific institutions, NGOs and national environmental agencies in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey, France, Germany and Bulgaria.

On the Bulgarian side in the meeting participated Dr. Yordan Koshev (from IBEI - BAS and European Souslik Conservation Officer of the LIFE project "Land for LIFE") and Maria Kachamakova (PhD student at IBEI - BAS and Associate to the project) . The conference was also attended by one of our most active volunteers, Dimitra-Lida Rammou (PhD student at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece).

Jordan Koshev led the first panel of presentations devoted to the ecology of the European Souslik, and Maria Kachamakova presented a presentation on the results of the dispersion of the sousliks and their spatial behavior. The results were obtained from the radiotelemetry of 18 sousliks in the colony near Momina Tsarkva, carried out within the framework of the project in order to trace the effect of the translocation in the last known locality of the spesies in the  Natura 200 area “Zapadna Strandzha”.

Author of the title photo: © Olivér Váczi