Now protected under International Union for Conservation of Nature Category II, the park encompasses over 400 km of rivers and nearly 13,000 hectares.
This is a first in the field of nature conservation in Europe, and it comes from southern Albania: after more than ten years of an intense campaign led by environmental associations, la Vjosa has just been officially declared a national park. On Wednesday, March 15, the Albanian government and the sportswear brand Patagonia signed an agreement to preserve the entirety of this river which flows without obstacles in the south of the country, but also several of its tributaries.
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The park encompasses over 400 km of rivers and nearly 13,000 hectares which are now protected under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Category II. It should be noted that the exceptional landscapes and biodiversity of the Vjosa had been threatened for several years by around forty hydroelectric power station projects.
According to Ulrich Eichelman, director of the NGO Riverwatch, by keeping the river dynamics of the Vjosa intact, this unique park could influence the protection of other rivers elsewhere in Europe: “Something like this has never been done before, never created before: we are not just protecting a river or a stretch of a river, we are protecting an entire river system, he rejoices. The Vjosa, the main river, but also the tributaries, and even the tributaries of the tributaries! And I think it’s a whole new concept that should become a model for Europe.”
A project widely supported by local communities
For years, the inhabitants of the Vjosa Valley had opposed the dam project. They protested, asked for help from scientists and took legal action. Today, as Albania has become a fashionable tourist destination, many hope to improve their daily lives through this national park status and sustainable tourism. Irma Tako is responsible for a rafting agency in the town of Përmet: “At the beginning, we thought that we would develop by building hydroelectric power stations, but with time, most people understood that this was not the case, and that our future would be made by respecting and protecting nature, not by transforming it.”
If the proclamation of this “national park of the wild river” is already a victory, many challenges await its designers. And first of all, the international airport project that the Albanian government is building in the Vjosa delta, a refuge for thousands of migratory birds.