The 3rd Rufford Small Grants Conference, named „Explore and protect the natural beauty of Balkans“, for grant awardees from Balkan region was held on September 27-28 this year at Silver Lake in Serbia. The Conference started with memorable speech of guest lecturer Nedim Kemer from Turkey, followed by oral and poster presentations of reserchers and conseravtionists from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. On the last day of the Conference Miloš Popović (PMF, Niš) and Dimitrije Radišić (PMF, Novi Sad) led a workshop on the IUCN Red Lists. The afternoons were reserved for sightseeing of Silver Lake, Đerdap Gorge and surounding cultural and historical sites, such as archeological locality Lepenski Vir and Golubac Fortress.
During the Conference our member Jelena Šeat presented her research on true bugs in saline grasslands of Banat, more on the project you can read here. As a representative of HabiProt, she also participated in organizacion of the Conference together with colleagues Ana Ćurić (BHHU „ATRA“, Sarajevo), Slavica Vaselek (Faculty of Agriculture, Novi Sad) i Miloš Popović.
Gathering colleagues from the region is always a great pleasure for everyone, and would be nice to complement it with future joint projects.