15 October 2014
15/10/2014 - About 60 parks from the Western Balkans region signed the declaration for the establishment of the association "Dinaric Parks: Network of Protected Areas of the Dinarics," among which there are also two protected areas from Kosovo.
The third International WWF Conference on "Parks of the Dinaric Arc" was held in Brijuni National Park in Croatia, in which 60 protected areas from eight countries in the region, by signing the Declaration, laid the foundations of the association "Dinaric Parks." Among the parks that signed this Declaration are also Gërmia Regional Park and Sharr National Park.
This is the third year that WWF has been implementing the project "Parks of the Dinaric Arc", through which a network of 82 protected areas has been created in eight countries of the region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia. Within the framework of this project, two international conferences have been held so far, one in Banja Luka and the other in Budva, while this year around 150 participants from 13 European countries gathered in Brijuni to discuss the topic of sustainable tourism in protected areas. The conference was also attended by the leader of the Europarc Federation, Mr. Ignace Schops.
At the conference, the results of the assessment of ecosystem benefits in parks were also presented, a work that WWF had carried out over the past two years with 57 parks in the region. On this occasion, it was emphasized that the most economically exploitable resources in parks are tourism, commercial use of water, forests, and employment. It was also stated that in the region there are 16 protected areas in which there are water plants, but none of their revenues contribute to the park for the quality of the water they use. Additionally, 18 parks also have hydroelectric plants. WWF concluded that water is an important resource in the region that should be used sustainably. Tourism is recognized as a major source of income, but care must be taken to ensure that it is not mass tourism but sustainable.
The third international WWF conference, "Parks of the Dinaric Arc," concluded with a study trip to the MOTOVUNSKA UMA Forest Reserve where participants learned about the protected area management system in Croatia. For more information, see the attached press release from WWF and Dinarides Parks.