Christos AstarasForest Research Institute (ELGO-DIMITRA) Greece
Christos Astaras
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Publications (54)
Agroforestry has a long history of evolution in Europe and has been especially selected under the unfavorable socioeconomic and environmental conditions of the Mediterranean region. The recent changes in social-ecological conditions have increased the interest in the contribution of agroforestry to the mitigation of forthcoming challenges. Thus, th...
Heron colonies are dynamic components of wetlands. Therefore, their systematic monitoring is important for the management of both birds and wetlands. During the period 1988–2018, we counted breeding pairs of seven colonial breeding heron species at 65 colonies across 37 wetlands in Greece. We considered as annual variables of a population: (a) year...
The need for remote, reliable, and scalable monitoring of plummeting biodiversity amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems and changing climate has sparked enormous interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) over multiple disciplines and ecosystems. Even though PAM could support UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Biodiversity I...
The Balkan chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra balcanica) is a subspecies of the Northern
chamois (R. rupicapra) with an Inadequate-Bad (U2) conservation status, despite being protected at a national level in Greece. In 2022, we conducted four seasonal surveys on Mt. Olympus covering 70 kilometers per season. In total, we detected chamois 569 times (48%)...
The Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) is a non-invasive method, suitable especially for the monitoring of
cryptic and nocturnal species such as Eurasian Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus). To examine the acoustic ecology
of this understudied species in Greece, three acoustic sensors were deployed (>2 km distance between them) creating a grid. The mon...
The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath are the most significant socio-economic crises in modern history. The pandemic’s devastating impacts have prompted urgent policy and regulatory action to reduce the risks of future spillover events and pandemics. Stronger regulatory measures for the trade of wildlife are central to discussions of a policy res...
Simple Summary
The European turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) is a migratory species that overwinters in sub-Saharan Africa, migrating to Europe each spring to breed. Over the past four decades, turtle dove populations have declined by as much as 79%, making the species vulnerable to extinction. A major threat to the species is illegal killing (poa...
For large herbivores inhabiting arid/semi-arid environments, water can be a limiting resource affecting their distribution and abundance for periods when water requirements are not met via forage. The Cyprus mouflon (Ovis gmelini ophion) is such a species, which is endemic to the mountain habitats of Cyprus. Recognizing water scarcity to be a major...
Wolf (Canis lupus) populations have recovered and expanded across many parts of the world thanks to conservation efforts, including improved legal status and restoration of their prey. Concurrently, public concerns regarding the risk of wolf attacks on humans and livestock are increasing as wolves occupy human-dominated landscapes. We examined a un...
Large mammal species are considered as “umbrella” species for maintaining the function of ecosystems in forests and for protecting biodiversity. The Rhodope Mountain Range shows unique biodiversity in Greece, belonging to the Natura 2000 network and hosting important species. It is also home to every large species of the continental mammals of Gree...
Terrestrial small mammals form an important component of natural and urban environments, as they represent a significant part of the trophic chain and contribute to the regeneration of forests through seed dissemination. Moreover, their strong and flexible population dynamics in response to environmental changes render them suitable indices of the...
Assessing the impact of natural disasters, such as fires, on the biodiversity of forest ecosystems, as well as the rate of its recovery over time, is important for the design and evaluation of post-disaster management practices. In recent years, acoustic indices are increasingly used as an affordable and rapid way to assess a site’s biodiversity. T...
A pipeline for automatic detection of chainsaw events in audio recordings is presented as the means to detect illegal logging activity in a protected natural environment. We propose a two-step process that consists of an activity detector at the front end and a deep neural network (DNN) classifier at the back end. At the front end, we use the Summa...
Subsistence poaching threatens the persistence of wildlife populations worldwide and the well-being of people who participate in poaching. We conducted interviews around Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda to assess the acceptability of poaching. Conflict with wildlife was the most important factor determining attitudes towards poaching and the t...
Passive acoustic monitoring is a wildlife monitoring method used especially for the study of vocally active species which are difficult to observe directly. The tawny owl (Strix aluco, Linnaeus 1758) is such a species, and has not been previously studied in Greece. The aim of the study was to provide a first insight into the species' acoustic ecolo...
In the face of a growing human footprint, understanding interactions among threatened large carnivores is fundamental to effectively mitigating anthro- pogenic threats and managing species. Using data from a large-scale camera trap survey, we investigated the effects of environmental and anthropogenic variables on the interspecific interaction of a...
The Forest Dormouse, Dryomys nitedula , has a wide geographic distribution, from Switzerland in the west, through eastern and southern Europe, Asia Minor and the Caucasus, to central Russia, central Asia and Mongolia in the east. Previous phylogenetic studies revealed highly divergent lineages in some part of the distribution, suggesting that the h...
There has been little research on the distribution and ecology of the four dormouse species occurring in Greece; the Edible Dormouse ( Glis glis ), Forest Dormouse ( Dryomys nitedula ), Hazel dormouse ( Muscardinus avellanarius ) and Mouse-tailed Dormouse ( Myomimus roachi ). As a result, the latter three species are listed as data deficient (DD) i...
Hybridisation between domestic and wild taxa can pose severe threats to wildlife conservation, and human induced hybridisation, often linked to species' introductions and habitat degradation, may promote reproductive opportunities between species for which natural interbreeding would be highly unlikely. Using a biome specific approach, we examine t...
The European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus) is an endangered semifossorial small mammal of grassland/agricultural ecosystems. In the last few decades, the species' population has declined throughout its range in Europe. The Greek populations represent the southernmost limit of the species' range and are notably small, scattered, and locate...
Golden Eagles are resident in Greece and known to feed mainly on tortoises when breeding. However, information on alternative prey is scarce, especially during the tortoise brumation, that roughly coincides with the eagles’ non-breeding season. We analyzed 827 prey items collected from 12 territories over five territory years and 84 records of eagl...
The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath are of the most significant socio-economic crises in modern history. The pandemic’s devastating impacts have prompted urgent policy and regulatory action to reduce the risks of future spillover events and pandemics. Stronger regulatory measures for the trade of wildlife are central to discussions of a policy...
Wildlife monitoring is essential for conservation science and data‐driven decision‐making. Tropical forests pose a particularly challenging environment for monitoring wildlife due to the dense vegetation, and diverse and cryptic species with relatively low abundances. The most commonly used monitoring methods in tropical forests are observations ma...
The Balkan populations of the European wildcat are among the least studied. This study reports the first findings on the spatial ecology and activity pattern of the wildcat in Greece and compares them to those of better studied northern populations. We fitted five wildcats (two males, three females) with collars containing GPS and accelerometer log...
Conflict with humans and habitat fragmentation are major threats to large carnivores in Africa, and transboundary protected areas may ease some of the space requirements for individual countries. The W‐Arly‐Pendjari complex (WAP) in West Africa sits across Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger and is the last regional stronghold for many species, including...
Grazing has long been recognized as an effective means of modifying natural habitats and, by extension, as a wildlife and protected area management tool, in addition to the obvious economic value it has for pastoral communities. A holistic approach to grazing management requires the estimation of grazing timing, frequency, and season length, as wel...
The media widely covers large carnivores and their impacts on human livelihood and plays an important role in their conservation. Yet, we know little about how species identity affects news selection, framing, accuracy and information flow. We investigated the online coverage of two cases of attacks or alleged attacks on humans alternatingly attrib...
Overhunting and habitat loss from the expansion of agriculture and extractive industries are the primary threats to primate species, 65% of which are threatened with extinction. In Africa, red colobus (Piliocolobus spp.) are the most endangered group of monkeys due to their vulnerability to these human pressures. The conservation status of the Crit...
The Evros delta is one of the most important wetlands for wintering waterfowl in Greece and the most popular among waterfowl hunters. This study addresses hunting activity and harvest while also investigating the relationship between weather conditions and hunting activity to suggest ways of improving waterfowl management. We counted wintering wate...
Passive acoustic monitoring is rapidly gaining recognition as a practical, affordable and robust tool for measuring gun hunting levels within protected areas, and consequently for its potential to evaluate anti-poaching patrols’ effectiveness based on outcome (i.e., change in hunting pressure) rather than effort (e.g., kilometres patrolled) or outp...
Hybridisation between wild taxa and their domestic congeners is a significant conservation issue. Domestic species frequently outnumber their wild relatives in population size and distribution and may therefore genetically swamp the native species. The European wildcat (Felis silvestris) has been shown to hybridise with domestic cats (Felis catus)....
IUCN Red List Assessment for Drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus)
https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T12753A17952490.en
https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/12753/17952490
This study provides a 26-year comparison of relative primate abundance and community composition in northeastern Korup National Park (KNP), South West, Cameroon. We present survey data from ecological line transects collected in 2014 and 2016 that are contextualized with previous surveys (1990, 2004/2005), allowing for comparative analysis of prima...
Recently, feline cardio-pulmonary nematodes have attracted high scientific interest, as they are increasingly reported from various areas. Most of these parasites have similar transmission patterns and/or host reservoirs, thus they may affect domestic and wild felids living in sympatry. In the present study, a case of multiple cardio-pulmonary para...
Context: Mitigating wolf–livestock conflict is crucial for both wolf (Canis lupus) conservation and livestock farming. Wolf attacks at livestock gathering areas often result in surplus killing, severe economic losses and emotional distress for the farmers, and financial claims from compensation funds. They may also trigger retaliatory killing of wo...
Biomonitoring should inform protected area managers not only about changes in the state of species and their habitat over time, but also on the levels of threats they face. Only then can the drivers of change be determined, permitting the evaluation and adaptation – as required – of existing conservation strategies. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM...
Effective biodiversity protection requires a good understanding of the conservation status of species and habitats in an area where they occur and their changes within time and space, achieved by updated data from fieldwork. New tools and state of the art technologies for collecting and managing large amounts of data over time and space,
including...
The European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) is the only felid with confirmed presence in Greece. Due to its elusive nature, the species has received little scientific attention and data concerning its distribution and population status is scarce and outdated. This is why the wildcat is listed as Data Deficient in the Red Data Book of Threate...
Study area 700km2 with relatively high density of small sized human settelments, dense deciduous forest cover and roading. • We installed 12 IR cameras using a (5km*5km) grid over a period of 5 consecutive months (4 survey periods) from July to December 2017. (fig. 2) • Each camera was rotated inside the same grid cell 4 times so as to maximize the...
ABSTRACT
The presence of dogs Canis familiaris in Greek rural landscapes – even far from human settlements – is a well-known but poorly documented and quantified fact. Typically, the dog population consists of resident feral solitary or pack living dogs, permanent or seasonal shepherd dogs (often free ranging near livestock corrals) and a seasonal...
η Ευρασιατική βίδρα Lutra lutra (Linnaeus, 1758)
εντός του Εθνικού Πάρκου Λίμνης Κερκίνης
Max word count: 225 Current word count: 215 Motivated, in part, by the presence of Preuss's red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus preussi), Korup was designated as Cameroon's first rain forest national park in 1986. For most of its history and continuing through today, the park has been supported and managed by large, internationally-funded conservation...
Each plot consisted of three 0.05 ha circular subplots 50m apart (Fig. 2). Data on vegetation (e.g. number of trees), biomass and wildlife (mammals/signs + observations) within the subplots were recorded in 2014. We calculated the mean elevation and terrain ruggedness index (TRI) within a 500 m buffer at each plot using Quantum GIS, and then used c...
In the framework of this research focusing on conservation status evaluation of wolves at a large
spatial scale we used a) Presence data in the form of wolf attacks to livestock at a national scale
(ELGA) and b) Direct field data (2006-2016) from 44 separate wolf territories, to estimate
population size and distribution extent. We analyzed attack e...
Context Livestock predation by tiger and leopard in Bhutan is a major threat to the conservation of these felids. Conflict mitigation planning would benefit from an improved understanding of the spatial pattern of livestock kills by the two predators. Objectives
We aimed to identify the landscape features that predict livestock kills by tiger and l...
The populations of many endangered species are becoming increasingly fragmented, and accurate, current information on the status of these subpopulations is essential for the design of effective conservation strategies within a human-dominated landscape. The drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) is one of the most spectacular and endangered primates in Afr...
It is difficult to predict how current climate change will affect wildlife species adapted to a tropical rainforest environment. Understanding how population dynamics fluctuated in such species throughout periods of past climatic change can provide insight into this issue. The drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) is a large-bodied rainforest adapted mamm...
Studies of polyspecific associations among African forest primates have primarily focused on arboreal Cercopithecus and Procolobus/Colobus species. We examined the association frequency of the terrestrial drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) with six sympatric monkey species in Korup National Park, Cameroon, testing reports that Mandrillus associations a...
The contribution of primates to the seed rain in tropical forests has been long recognized, and there is evidence that these services are not compensated for by other frugivores in the event of primate extirpations. Given the vulnerability of large rainforest frugivores to hunting and the crisis dimensions that commercial hunting is taking in much...
We report preliminary findings on drill population ecology, feeding ecology, primate associations and conservation status in Korup National Park, Cameroon, based on analysis of data collected during 1,346 km (620 field hours) of trail patrols from February to June 2006. We encountered drills on 25 occasions and collected 304 fecal samples. Group si...