At a formal ceremony in Tepelena this morning, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama and his Minister of the Environment and Tourism Mirela Kumbaro declared the River Vjosa a Wild River National Park. As from today, the entire River Vjosa in Albania from its border with Greece to the Adriatic sea and its free flowing tributaries – a river system totalling more than 400 kilometres in length – have the very high level of protection.
The feasibility study is the result of six months of extensive fieldwork and in-depth analysis by a team of over 30 experts in areas such as eco-tourism, geomorphology, ecology, planning and management of protected areas, sustainable financing of national parks, legislation, and social and environmental impact assessment.
The famous choreographer Gentian Doda (was bleibt kollektiv) is bringing eleven dancers from all over the world to Tirana for a contemporary dance performance as a tribute to Vjosa! Premiere: October 24 and 25, 2022 @ National Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Tirana
After ten years of dedicated action by local communities, environmentalists, scientists and artists to permanently protect the Vjosa River and its tributaries, today, the Albanian government took the historic step of signing a commitment to establish a Vjosa Wild River National Park. The Wild River National Park will protect the entire network of the Vjosa from the Greek border to the Adriatic Sea, including the free-flowing tributaries. This is something that has never been done before in Europe.
After a decade of efforts to protect the Vjosa River in Albania, this petition will gather the voices of all supporters and demand an action that will make a real change: Proclaiming Vjosa as a National Park. Sign the petition and share it with your friends so that we join our efforts to protect what nature took centuries to create.
This baseline survey summarises the value of the Vjosa River system as one of the few remaining reference sites for dynamic floodplains in Europe on the one hand, and reveals the detrimental effects dams could have on the river system on the other. Only one dam will significantly destroy the ecological continuum of a pristine river.
On March 25, the European Parliament adopted the 2021 Albanian Progress Report in which they “urge the [Albanian] government to minimise the impact on biodiversity by stopping hydropower development in protected areas, in particular in areas near the Valbona and Vjosa rivers, and to establish as soon as possible the Vjosa National Park, extending the whole length of the river...”
On the occasion of this year’s World Water Day, today, several NGO’s released a series of photos capturing the words Vjosa National Park Now cloaking the foreground of globally recognised monuments in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, and Tirana. The activists behind the visual action are targeting the attention of European and Albanian politicians, urging them to declare the Vjosa in Albania Europe’s first Wild River National Park.
Most recently, ten Alternative Nobel Prize winners - including the renowned Prof. em. Dr. Michael Succow - addressed and signed an open letter to the several leading Albanian politicians and EU representatives, urging them to protect the Vjosa River and begin preparations to establish it as Europe’s first Wild River National Park.
Today, February 10th, 20 Albanian environmental organisations submitted a detailed proposal for the creation of the Vjosa National Park to the Minister of Tourism and Environment. The group of NGOs feel compelled to take this step since Albanian government representatives have been announcing the national park for months, but have not taken any steps towards its implementation.
