Forest chief sets sights on Mt Penteli’s rebirth

Back when the Environment Ministry's general director of forests was a boy, his family would leave Athens every summer to spend a month and a half exploring the enchanted forests of Mount Pindos. There, in the land of his forebears, on the border between the regions of Trikala and Ioannina in northwestern Greece, at an altitude of 1,000 to 1,300 meters, in a landscape tickly blanketed by firs, oaks and giant beeches, the seeds of a forester were planted in the heart, if not the mind just yet, of Vangelis Gountoufas.

The sudden death of his father during his university entrance exams caused him to miss the test in mathematics, as a result of which he ended up at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki's School of Forestry and Natural Environment in 1983, where the seed went on to grow. Just a few days into the course, the 18-year-old freshman knew that he was exactly where...