ANNUAL REPORT 2022

What an exciting year 2022 has been for PONT. We included the transboundary Korab-Shara Albanian Alps area into our grant portfolio and started to explore the concept of conservation connectivity. Based on solid preparations, we started the first eleven grants in our new geographical area. Three grants for the new protected areas (Albanian Alps National Park and Korab-Koritnik Nature Park in Albania and the newly proclaimed Shar Mountain National Park in North Macedonia); seven grants for local NGOs and one large regional grant. We profoundly thank the German Government for its generous additional contribution making this geographical expansion possible.

We increased our annual grant budget from €1.2 million to €2.1 million and doubled the supported hectares of protected areas from 150.427 to 351.234. We received a sinking fund contribution of €5 million by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation earmarked for Greece and raised £300.000 unrestricted funding over three years from the Sigrid Rausing Trust.  The two donations enable us to start a programme for new environmental actors in North-Western Greece.

The long-awaited first official transboundary meetings for Prespa Park took place in June 2022. We established and implemented our Environmental Social Management System and improved PONT’s Strategic Framework, Grant Manual, and application and reporting templates. With the increasing portfolio, we welcomed and onboarded new staff to our team and expanded our office space. After two quiet years, we were overwhelmed by visits from people interested in our work in the region.

PONT was established back in 2015 and much has changed since then, including two geographical expansions, many new protected areas and environmental actors funded, and a bigger staff team. We take this opportunity to thank Lynda Mansson for guiding and supporting PONT through this growth as she stepped down as President of the Supervisory Board. The PONT team wishes you all the best!

The winning grants by national NGOs will start in the transboundary Korab-Shara Albanian Alps area and ecological corridors.  We have our first external evaluation to reflect on the previous six years and guide our next steps. We are launching a Call for Proposals in North-Western Greece to support conservation connectivity in this biodiversity rich region. We look forward hosting several visits for our donors and will continue to follow-up on our increasing grant portfolio.

As a trust fund, PONT’s approach to conservation differs from the standard “project based” or “short-term” solutions. PONT’s funding is long-term and focused on key conservation actions in the biodiversity rich mountains and lakes bridging Albania, North Macedonia, and Greece. It is designed to ensure the sustainable management of the Prespa-Ohrid, Korab-Shara, and Albanian Alps regions, including ecological corridors between these areas. Our model emphasises long-term commitment, transparency, efficiency, accountability, and collaboration.

We have two funding programmes:

1. PONT enables protected areas in the PONT Focus Region, to develop and implement their management plans to conserve nature through sustainable co-financing of operational costs.
2. PONT provides grants to environmental actors who are qualified not-for-profit organisations implementing conservation actions in the Prespa-Ohrid, Korab-Shara and Albanian Alps regions, including ecological corridors between these areas.

PONT supported 35 grants in 2022 (10 grants for protected area management authorities managing 11 protected areas and 25 grants for environmental actors).

Protected areas are central to PONT’s approach. To be effective, though, protected areas need to be of sufficient size and ecologically connected to one another and the larger landscape. The areas which provide ways to identify, maintain, enhance, and restore ecological connectivity are called Connectivity Conservation Areas (CCAs) or ecological corridors. Ecological corridors are not a substitute for protected areas but complement them, especially in regions where additional protected areas are not possible, and/or connectivity is required to support biodiversity and ecological processes of the existing protected areas. Ecological corridors facilitate adaptation to changing environmental conditions, such as climate change. The ecological corridors and protected areas they connect make up an ecological network.

The PONT Focus Region has been identified as strategically important for maintaining ecological connectivity along the Pindus Mountains mixed forests ecoregion and further north towards the Dinaric Mountains mixed forests ecoregion. Based on expert studies commissioned by PONT six Connectivity Conservation Areas (three in Albania; two in North Macedonia and one in North-Western Greece) were proposed with a total of 1.26 million hectares.

We are very pleased with the progress made by our beneficiaries and highlight some of the results below.

Estimating the abundance of brown bears in the wild is a daunting task, it’s virtually impossible to directly observe the bears and tagging them with individual-specific tags is an onerous task and unfeasible in practice, as is the reading of the tags. This has meant brown bear populations are often based on “expert opinions” and rarely backed by strong evidence from the field. Previous efforts to estimate the size of the population in Prespa used questionnaire surveys to “guesstimate” the number of brown bears in the wider Prespa region. The latest survey estimated the total number to be around 60, with 35 of those in the Macedonian part of Prespa, 18 in Greek Prespa, and 7 in Albanian Prespa.

The validity of these so-called “guesstimates” is often challenged though. However, molecular genetics has recently opened up new possibilities to “tag” individual bears through genotypes obtained from genetic material that they leave behind in the environment (e.g.: faeces or hair). This led the PrespaNet NGO network to conduct a two-year transboundary study in Prespa using novel genetic techniques to estimate the abundance of brown bears in the region.

The genetic study revealed a minimum of 51 individuals, 19 females and 32 males in the entire study area. This is well within expectations and supports previous guesstimates. Genetic diversity in bears in the Prespa region appears somewhat lower than has been observed in the West Balkans. However, it is considerably higher than in the European bear populations that are known to be very small and endangered. This fits in with the findings of other studies in that wider geographic region. Recaptures enable the possibility of connecting sampling locations to the same individual, giving insight into their movement and use of corridors. Notably, some of the bears cross the borders between the countries. Two male individuals have been observed to make longer excursions throughout the study area. This study highlights the importance of good habitat connectivity and the use of bears as flagship species to enforce better protection of biodiversity hotspots such as Prespa.