On the wild and beautiful Croatian island of Cres, Frank Partridge discovers a last-ditch struggle to save one of Europe’s rarest species
It did not take me long to fall in love with Koleda. She approached me nervously at first, looking me up and down to make sure my intentions were honourable. After a minute or two she relaxed and reached out towards me. She took a particular liking to my trainers, stroking them repeatedly with her foot. When I held out my handkerchief she grasped it and encouraged me to join in a gentle tug-of-war. It was only a game: she released it from her giant claws when she realised it was not food.
Koleda is a Eurasian griffon vulture, two years old but almost fully grown, who was rescued from the Adriatic after falling, poisoned, from her cliff-top nest on the island of Cres. Now she is being nursed in a sanctuary, and, if she makes a full recovery, will be released to join the island’s 70 pairs of griffons whose immediate future is assured because of the crusading vision of one man.
Goran Susic, born in the highlands of northern Croatia, with a doctorate in natural sciences and a passion for ornithology, first came to the rugged, undeveloped Croatian island 25 years ago and was mesmerised by the giant birds he saw wheeling about the skies. ‘The griffon’s flight is poetry in the air,’ he says. ‘Watching a vulture fly helps you understand the perfect workings of nature, especially when it angles its wings and frame and somehow makes headway against a wind strong enough to knock a human over.’
When Susic first encountered them, the
Cres vultures were heading for extinction.
He decided to relocate to the island to
prevent it from happening. In 1993, after
years of campaigning and fundraising, he
opened Croatia’s first eco centre, near the
1,000-year-old hill-top village of Beli, in a
former schoolhouse built by Italian forces
during World War II, when they controlled
the island. That was where I met Koleda.
With a wingspan that can touch three
metres, the vulture makes the air shudder when it takes flight,
but you are rarely close enough to feel it. It can fly at up to
120kmh at altitudes more than a kilometre and a half higher
than any other bird, and its eyesight is nine times sharper than
ours. But such immense creatures are as highly-strung as ballet
dancers, vulnerable to subtle changes in climate, the environment,
and the destructive activities of their fellow creatures.
On Cres, the vulture’s nemesis is man, who has set in motion
a spiral of decline by upsetting the precarious balance of its
habitat. Farmers laid poisoned traps to keep foxes and wolves
away from their herds of sheep, but Komina, and many others,
took the bait – often with fatal consequences.
Other people, from near and far, polluted the land and sea
with indigestible throwaways such as china, glass and plastic.
‘Inside the carcass of one dead vulture we found the leg of a
Barbie doll,’ says Susic.
Tourists on summer boating excursions, meanwhile, can
make enough noise to force the frightened birds from their
nests, sometimes when there is insufficient wind to support their great weight. Young birds in particular
can become disorientated and
fall into the sea. ‘Leisure tourists, who
sail here on day trips, bring nothing but
garbage to the island,’ is Susic’s verdict.
‘The birds are a potent symbol of how
we’ve lost contact with nature through
industry and consumerism.’
It goes without saying that it was also
man who introduced wild boar to a section
of the Tramuntara forest that has
now been cordoned off for the pleasure of well-heeled hunting
tourists who come for sporting weekends.
‘
Our focus is protecting the griffon vulture and the future of the
island’s ecosystem,’ says Susic. ‘What’s theirs?’ The high fence
prohibits Susic and I from entering into the depths of the oak
forest, but it has not prevented the boars from escaping into the
island’s open pastures, attacking the sheep that not only provide
the vultures ultimately with their main source of food, but also
help maintain the island’s astonishing range of plant life.
Cutting across the thin, 65km-long island is the 45th parallel
of the northern hemisphere, halfway between the
North Pole and the Equator. A strange thing happens
here: some species flourish north of the line, while others do
better to the south. No one has proved that nature somehow
knows where the midway point of the hemisphere is, but it
certainly thrives here. Cres has almost as many native plant
species as the British Isles, including nearly 400 different
grasses, and a far greater variety of wild flowers, insects, lizards
and butterflies than the surrounding region As he studied the island, Susic realised that
the humble sheep held the key, keeping down the
prolific juniper plant that would otherwise colonise
the open pastures and suffocate the smaller species,
one by one. ‘If the sheep go, this magical island
will resemble a cultivated garden within twenty
years,’ he says.
o while it was the plight of the griffon
vulture – ‘the flagship species’ – that first
drew him to Cres, Susic’s mission steadily
spread its wings to embrace every element
of the natural kaleidoscope. ‘I set out to change the
image of the griffon from an ugly, dirty, dangerous
consumer of offal to the king of the sky,’ he says.
‘But after several years I discovered that it’s senseless
to study something that’s going to be extinct
in my lifetime. I realised that everything below the
vulture is important too – butterflies, spiders and
snakes, they all have a part to play. If you lose one
species, it’s forever. Everything is interwoven.’
Susic is outlining his mission in the dining room
of the eco centre, a laid-back, cheerful establishment
run by five permanent staff, four part-timers
and an assortment of volunteers who come from all
over the world. Most of them are highly qualified,
but are prepared to carry out menial tasks in return
for their dormitory accommodation, three meals a
day, like-minded company and the chance to help
protect a corner of the planet that has not yet succumbed
to mankind’s relentless advance.
Chaya from Australia is on her haunches in
the hallway, completing the painting of a mural
designed to appeal to the young children who come here on educational workshops. The main
classroom houses a permanent exhibition about
the ecology of Cres, and the life and mythology
of its endangered griffons. Sonia from France is
looking after Koleda and three other vultures in
an adjoining cage. Scores of others will join them
in the summer.
‘These volunteers are the first generation of
eco-tourists,’ says Susic. ‘Our future depends on
them. An American came here – a 75-year-old
from Texas. He told me he had two brothers who
were oil billionaires. He stayed for six weeks in the
cold spring, working 12 hours a day, and at the
end of it he said he felt richer than his brothers
would ever be.’
Among the daily tasks for the volunteers is the
maintenance of the picturesque looped pathways
(including a 1st-century Roman road) that crisscross
the fields and forest, visiting long-abandoned
medieval villages and older, more mysterious prehistoric
stone settlements. Another of their duties
is to deliver meat to two remote feeding stations
in the cliffs, known as the Vulture’s Restaurant,
ensuring the birds survive for a while longer.
On my last day, I bade farewell to Koleda and
drove towards the port. Spring rain was sheeting
down; a chill wind was blowing hard. Suddenly,
I caught sight of an unmistakeable, dark shape
high above. A griffon vulture was making light of
the elements, gliding insouciantly through the air
in wide, sweeping arcs, creating grace and power
from the very forces of nature that would have most
human beings running for shelter.
HOW TO GET THERE
Croatia Airlines has flights
from a number of European
hubs to Zagreb, Pula and
Rijeka, which are all within
easy reach of Cres by road
and a short ferry crossing.
There are car ferries from
Brestova on the mainland
(20 minutes) and Valbiska on
the neighbouring island of
Krk (30 minutes) and a passenger
ferry from Rijeka (75
minutes). All are operated by
Jadrolinija Ferries
(www.jadrolinija.hr).
WHERE TO STAY
Pension Tramontana, double
rooms from around $40 per
night, based on two sharing,
including breakfast.
Tel: (+385) 51 840 519
www.diving-beli.com
Eco Centre
The Eco Centre Caput
Insulae in Beli is open to the
public between 1 March and
31 October. Admission €3
($5). The website has further
information about the centre’s
volunteer programme.
Tel: (+385) 51 840 525
www.caput-insulae.com
More information
www.tzg-cres.hr
www.croatia.h
