Whether you’ve made a donation or not or are just wondering how monies are spent, here is a spreadsheet of expenditures for the year 2023. The majority expense was petrol to get us to the trails to be cleared plus food for the volunteers. I conducted several hikes, boosted by two Austrian groups, which helped cover the outgoings.
You don’t need me to tell you how many apps and publications exist that help us identify the flora around us. We all have our favorites. Ours is iNaturalist. It is based at the California Academy of Sciences and is an independent nonprofit platform. Skopelos Trails is a donor, contributor and supporter. Confirming contributions, iNaturalist is used as a reference by study groups from all over the world. They can now suggest an astounding 80,000 species of plants, animals and fungi. I log our flora even when I know what I’m looking at. I do this for our records, for the use of others as well identifying unknown species.
It is through this platform that we were contacted by Spain’s department of Biogeographical Eco Botanical facility at the university of Savile who invited us to contribute towards their project on the study of the cytinus rock rose paracite. Over a period of a month, we collected samples of the female and male flowers (inflorescences) and dried them in bags of salt before sending them off in the post. For our efforts, we received a surprise donation which was about the same amount as the donation we had already made to iNaturalist!
Maintenance is being carried out and we’ve just completed the portion that runs between Diakopi and Pirgos (near Anania).
The app is now ready for use and can be downloaded via the Store. We’ll be adding routes whenever we can, in-between clearing. Thanks to ex volunteer Cristian for all the hard work in developing it.
