World Wide Fund for Nature

The lights on the Acropolis, Presidential Mansion, Parliament and other public buildings were switched off on Saturday evening to mark Earth Hour.

Organised by WWF, this year's event was dedicated to the forest, after the hottest year on record worldwide and the destruction of 120,000 hectares of woodland in Greece in last summer's fires.

In a global display of commitment to our planet, millions of households worldwide will switch off their lights for an hour at exactly 8:30 pm on Saturday. This symbolic gesture aims to galvanize efforts towards building a sustainable future for Earth.

Three environmental groups have filed a formal complaint with the European Commission against Greece about hydrocarbon extraction. They argue that Greece is licensing exploration and extraction in marine areas off Crete and in the Ionian Sea without first assessing the serious repercussions on the environment and wildlife.

WWF Greece has brought attention to the critical environmental challenges that Greece's new conservative government must confront. They addressed letters to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the new Environment Minister Theodoros Skylakakis, emphasizing the urgency of preserving natural ecosystems and climate stability over the next four years. 

Environmental groups are calling on the government to withdraw a bill tabled in Parliament last month which they say will gradually dismantle the protection of Natura 2000 sites.

Wild populations of monitored animal species have plummeted nearly 70 percent in the last 50 years, according to a landmark assessment released on Oct. 13 that highlights "devastating" losses to nature due to human activity.

Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forestry Tanczos Barna, said in Oradea on Monday that there are funds for preventing conflicts with large carnivores under a 10-million-euro project funded by the Ministry of European Investment and Projects (MIPE) that will start during the week.

Allocations via the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) for forests and natural protected areas amount to about 1.5 billion euros, but there's a risk that these funds will be wasted with no concrete finality because there is currently no reform plan for forestry in place, WWF Romania said in a statement.

In a joint letter the World Wildlife Funds of Greece and Spain have appealed to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to cancel all plans for hydrocarbon extraction in Greece.

WWF Greece invites professional and amateur shutterbugs to take part in a competition for the best photographs of Greek sites that belong to the European Union's Natura 2000 network of nature protection areas. The best images will be published by Fotografos magazine and win cool prizes.