Nicosia's Green Line — a divided city's buffer zone turned de facto wildlife corridor

Since the 1974 division of Cyprus, a UN-patrolled buffer zone up to several hundred metres wide has run through the heart of Nicosia and across the island, closed to construction, farming and most human activity.
In 2007, a joint Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot scientific team, supported by the UN Development Programme, carried out the first systematic biodiversity survey of the zone and documented 358 plant species, more than 100 bird species and 18 mammal species. Separately, the Cyprus Game and Fauna Service's monitoring scheme, running since 1997, has tracked the island's mouflon population recovering to roughly 2,500–3,000 animals, with a significant share sheltering inside the buffer zone, including around the abandoned village of Variseia.
UNDP environmental officer Nicolas Jarraud has called the strip a de facto wildlife corridor, but the protection is an unplanned by-product of political stalemate, not a designed conservation programme: there is no dedicated management authority, no recurring funding and no certification, and the habitat's future depends entirely on a political situation that could change without warning.

Read the full analysis: https://satoyamainitiative.org/case_studies/the-cyprus-buffer-zone-as-a-socio-ecological-landscape/