Читать книгу The Peaks of the Balkans Trail. Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo онлайн

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Catherine Bohne and Alfred Selimaje, who run the Rilindja Guesthouse in Valbona, are doing what they can to raise awareness of these proposals, which would obviously have a catastrophic impact on the environment and surrounding landscape – which is simultaneously the region’s main draw card for tourism and the basis for a sustainable local economy. Local residents, represented by an NGO, TOKA, have moved to block the projects by filing a lawsuit against the government. Nevertheless, in September 2016 bulldozers moved into position in the Dragobi and Maskollata regions of Valbona National Park.

You can find out more about the proposed hydroelectric projects in the Valbona Valley at www.toka-albania.org.

Wildlife and plants

The biodiversity of the Prokletije mountains in Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro is extraordinary, from large carnivores to raptors to clouds of butterflies, and one of the most spectacularly rich flora of anywhere in Europe.

Mammals

Prokletije is home to small numbers of Europe’s three large carnivore species – brown bear, grey wolf and Eurasian lynx – with their distribution limited in all cases to the remotest areas of the range. Crucial to the survival of these iconic species in the region is maintaining effective wildlife corridors – the so-called Balkan Green Belt along the border areas of Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo as well as between Albania and Macedonia (part of the European Green Belt initiative) which EuroNatur (www.euronatur.org) has been working to protect and strengthen since 2004. Encounters between humans and bears are very rare; in more than 15 years of hiking in the Balkans the author has never seen more than a few paw prints in the snow, and some scat.