**2.1 Fire suppression in DNP**

240 Sustainable Forest Management – Case Studies

residents, who take advantage of the new risk situations encountered in the area and aim at the renegotiation of forest management and building a new social consensus. Finally, we will attempt a philosophical grounding of the mixed-motive perspective and we will discuss its potential contribution in promoting a new conceptualization of sustainability in forest

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

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

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

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

management.

the main activity.

The biodiversity in DNP has to be attributed to a highly heterogeneous patchwork of habitats which are the result of traditional activities such as livestock grazing, small-scale agriculture and logging, as well as the use of fire (Grill & Cleary, 2003; Kati & Sekercioglu, 2006). However, many of these anthropogenic activities have either diminished or are undertaken rather infrequently (Schindler, 2010). Analogous socio-environmental trends have been reported for other Mediterranean mountainous regions (Álvarez Martínez et al., 2011; Badia et al., 2002; Bernués et al., 2005; Tàbara et al., 2003). In accord with the regulation of logging activities after the designation of DNP, the developments that have been described above have resulted in forest expansion and a decrease of forest clearings (Triantakonstantis et al., 2006), which comprise a crucial structural component of the foraging habitat of vultures (Catsadorakis et al., 2010; Gavashelishvili & McGrady, 2006). Therefore, protected area managers in DNP call for an urgent restoration of traditional activities with special reference made to grazing, which can halt the accumulation of dry plant biomass and reduce the risk of a wildfire (Catsadorakis et al., 2010; Poirazidis et al., 2004; Vasilakis et al., 2008).

Can Forest Management in Protected Areas Produce New Risk Situations?

**3. The emergence of new risk situations in DNP** 

A Mixed-Motive Perspective from the Dadia-Soufli-Lefkimi Forest National Park, Greece 243

ecotourism development is the apparent vulnerability of fragile natural environments to degrading impacts stemming from excessive visitor numbers (Ólafsdóttir & Runnströ, 2009). Despite the potential it can offer for marginal areas (Hovik et al., 2010), tourism development has been characterized as a fickle endeavour, where precise forecasts are not possible (Cole & Razak, 2008). Ecotourism scholars have highlighted the tendency of tourism for accelerating growth (Butler, 1999; Fennell & Ebert, 2004; Eagles, 2002; Lawson et al., 2003). This opportunistic character of tourism is reinforced in protected areas under the withdrawal of primary sector activities (Puhakka et al., 2009; Sharpley & Pearce, 2007).

**3.1 The 'eviction' of fire from DNP and its come-back as a new risk situation** 

to nature conservation (Clapp, 2004; Nygren, 2000; Durand & Vázquez, 2011).

unmanageable wildfire can never be excluded (Klenner et al., 2000).

**3.2 The irreducible interrelatedness of society and nature** 

otherwise be coherent and harmonious (Stavrakakis, 1999).

Much modern environmental thinking stems from the balance-of-nature metaphor (Hovardas & Korfiatis, 2011). According to this metaphor, natural systems tend towards a point of relative stability. Systems in equilibrium resist change and when balance of nature is upset by human intervention, self-regulatory forces work to return the system to the state of equilibrium. Nature conservation in the form of establishing and operating protected areas has been based on the balance-of-nature metaphor and on the separation of the natural realm from the social realm by the demarcation of boundaries (Diamond, 1975). Although the balance-of-nature metaphor has been challenged by developments in the field of ecology (Hovardas & Korfiatis, 2011), it still continues to determine perceptions and policies related

With the balance-of-nature metaphor acting as an organizing principle, the ecological discourse refers to a political project which wishes to establish a 'state of lost harmony' (Stavrakakis, 1999). The illusory character of the harmonious image of nature is revealed by manifestations of elements which cannot be accommodated by the balance-of-nature metaphor and assume a symptomatic form2 (Stavrakakis, 1999). In order for nature-inbalance to remain coherent, any evidence that is not compatible with this image and threatens to destabilize it has to be repressed and excluded from nature's symbolization. However, under this Lacanian frame, we have to accept that no repression can guarantee the disappearance of the undomesticated, excluded symptom, which should be expected to return to its place at an unsuspected time (Stavrakakis, 1999). It is in this way that fire is rendered a symptom exactly when it should be expected with certainty. A wildfire, which is a quite common phenomenon in forests all along the Mediterranean Basin, would have irreversible consequences for biodiversity conservation, ecotourism, and the local community in Dadia. Agee (1997) underlines that few managers plan for a devastating fire and they just hope that it will not occur on their watch. Yet, the event of an unexpected and

Instead of conceptualizing DNP as some kind of intact nature demarcated within park borders, we should perceive it as a new spatial configuration produced by a special forest management regime (Robbins, 2004). For instance, the reconfiguration of space through zoning in Dadia has been centered around the priority of black vulture conservation

2 The 'symptom' is an element which is thought to introduce disharmony in a symbolization that would

Despite the fact that fire has been recognized as a source of landscape heterogeneity in DNP and has contributed substantially in shaping the nesting habitat of the black vulture1 (Poirazidis et al., 2004), wildfires are acknowledged among the major threats of the park (Catsadorakis et al., 2010). Quite paradoxically, it is the 'wild', unexpected, and uncontrollable character of such a fire that is particularly alarming, causing anxiety among local residents and protected area managers in a national park. Although fire has long been considered as a natural phenomenon that determined evolutionary traits of plant species in Mediterranean ecosystems (Arianoutsou et al., 2011; Robbins, 2004), it cannot be allowed to 'return' to DNP. However, fire suppression is not a risk-neutral solution itself, since it is expected to increase surface fuel load and, thereby, foster the ignition of a wildfire (Chuvieco et al., 2010; Piñol et al., 2007; Sletto, 2010, 2011). Fortunately, DNP has not experienced any devastating event, such as the fires in Greece during the summer of 2007. The last incident of fire that has been recorded in DNP dates back to September 2008, when there were three fires ignited by lightning within one day. These fires destroyed about 60 hectares of mixed forest (i.e., pine and oak) and were put out quickly due to the immediate intervention of the Fire Service supported by local people and members of WWF Greece.
