**2. The Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli Forest National Park**

The study area is a public forest situated in north-eastern Greece next to the Greek–Turkish border (Fig. 1). The forest is dominated by Aegean pine (*Pinus brutia*), black pine (*Pinus nigra*), and oaks (*Quercus frainetto, Q. Cerris, Q. pubescens*). A development project funded by the World Bank in the late 1970s was about to intensify forest production, promote the clearing of oaks and reforestation with fast-growing pines. Based on a report of IUCN and WWF, the Greek Government established the Dadia Forest Reserve in 1980 by a Presidential Decree. The reserve was later included in the Natura 2000 sites proposed in Greece. The status of the reserve was further upgraded in 2006, when the protected area was recognized as a 'national park'. The park includes two strictly protected core areas (7290 ha), where all human activities are prohibited apart from those which are considered necessary for biodiversity conservation and scientific research. In the buffer zone (35170 ha), forestry is the main activity.

Fig. 1. The Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli Forest National Park

Dadia is most known for its raptor fauna; thirty-six out of thirty-eight European raptor species can be observed in the park. The conservation of the black vulture (*Aegypius monachus*) is the central subject of forest management in the region (Adamakopoulos et al., 1995; Poirazidis et al., 2004), since DNP hosts the only breeding population of the species in the Balkans (Skartsi et al. 2010). The two cores have 85% cover of pinewoods and mixed pine-oak woods and are crucial as nesting sites for the black vulture (Poirazidis et al., 2004). Maps of probability of occurrence for the nest sites of black vultures showed that nests are very likely to fall within the cores of DNP (Poirazidis et al., 2004). While the population in 1979 amounted to no more than 5 breeding pairs and a total of 26 individuals, the number of birds counted today in the park may range between 70 and 80 individuals, including about 20 breeding pairs (Skartsi et al., 2010). A number of projects implemented by WWF-Greece supported the increase of the population of the black vulture (Adamakopoulos et al., 1995; Poirazidis et al., 2002), for instance, vulture food supplement is provided in a feeding table that has been landscaped in the big core of the study area. Together with vulture food supplement, prohibition of hunting as well as strict control of forestry activities and road access that may lead to breeding failure have enabled the recovery of the black vulture (Poirazidis et al., 2004; Skartsi et al., 2008).

When the protected area was established in 1980, local people opposed fiercely the suspension of logging in the core zones of the forest reserve, since the loggers' cooperative in Dadia included more than 70 members, namely, about one-tenth of the total population of the village (Catsadorakis, 2010). This negative stance gradually shifted to an acceptance of the environmental conservation regime principally due to ecotourism development (Hovardas & Stamou, 2006a; Svoronou & Holden, 2005). The primary sector is currently decreasing in terms of employment, while the tertiary sector, including services and tourism, is gaining importance in the local economy (Liarikos, 2010). Ecotourism has been developed around wildlife viewing. Visitors are transferred to a Bird Observatory in full view of the vulture feeding table, where they can watch vultures feeding on carcasses (Hovardas & Poirazidis, 2006). The annual number of visitors has risen from less than 2000 in 1994 to more than 40000 today and infrastructure was gradually expanded to cover the rising demand (Hovardas, 2005). Apart from supporting ecotourism development, WWF-Greece has launched since the 1980s a series of environmental awareness campaigns including the celebration of the Annual Birds' Day.
