2021 is the final year for the transnational co-funded Life Euroturtles program, in which organizations from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Malta and Cyprus implement actions to ensure the survival of sea turtles in the Mediterranean.
The project was extended for four months (until the end of 2021) as the pandemic caused many delays and difficulties in carrying out actions for most partners in 2020.
Which actions were implemented by ARCHELON in 2020?
Despite the difficult conditions of due the pandemic, a total of over 700 nests were protected, by ARCEHLON’s field leaders and volunteers. Marine areas with a large presence of turtles were also mapped according to information from drone flights launched for this purpose and turtle monitoring with GSM transmitters was also applied.
The Green Fund of the Ministry of Environment will provide more external financial support to the Life Euroturtles project, covering a part of ARCHELON’s own contribution for this last year. This contribution is very important and will help in the successful completion of the project which will end this December. [photo 6]
The draft National Action Plan for Marine turtles was completed and is now processed by the Ministry of Environment to be legislated and formally adopted. In 2020, the “intensive care unit” at the Sea Turtle Rescue Center underwent a major refurbishment, which greatly reduced the recovery and rehabilitation time of injured and sick turtles.

However, awareness and educational activities were not left behind: an informative video was created on the activity and life cycle of sea turtles and the translation of the educational pack for schools into English was published, so that it could be used by other partners.