Twenty-two people on a mountain, with nets and notebooks, counting dragonflies and newts on Jablanica. It sounds like a hobby. In fact it is the only thing standing between an ecosystem and somebody's decision to build on it, drain it or cut it down - because without data, no protection law can be enforced.

The Macedonian Ecological Society held a three-day cross-border training on nature monitoring on Jablanica, where participants from Macedonia and Albania learned methods for protecting peat bogs, birds, newts and dragonflies. The training ran from 29 to 31 July at several key locations.

At the Vevčani Golina site, participants practised bird monitoring methods, while fieldwork at Labuništa and Podgorci lakes focused on tracking the condition of peat bogs, newts and dragonflies. The training was led by experts from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Skopje.

The most interesting thing is who was in the group. Among the 22 participants were staff from municipalities, public institutions and civil society organisations - but also local hunters and hikers. That is not a decorative line in a report. These are the people genuinely out there every weekend, unlike the inspector who shows up once a year, if at all.

The activity is part of a regional project to strengthen the management of cross-border protected areas in the Western Balkans, focused on the pilot areas Jablanica - Shebenik and Prokletije - Albanian Alps, both part of the European Emerald and Natura 2000 networks. The goals include harmonising management across borders in line with EU directives and better integrating monitoring data into management plans.

The same logic repeated this year in Prespa, where a cross-border summer school with young ecologists from Macedonia, Albania and Greece ran from 27 to 31 July, organised by the same society with partners from the PrespaNet network. Five days in the field instead of five days of presentations.

Nature does not recognise the border - water, birds and pollution cross without a passport. The question is whether institutions will learn to work by the same logic, or keep guarding their own slice of the same mountain. The training sessions are a start. What comes next - whether the collected data reaches plans that somebody actually applies - is the part that usually stalls.