Prespa National Park

Parku Kombëtar i Prespës
Entrance to the park
Coordinates: 40 ° 45 ′ 0 ″  N , 20 ° 55 ′ 0 ″  E
Location:	Korça County , Albania
Specialty:	Lake, wetlands, cultural monuments, mountain area
Next city:	Korça , Pustec
Surface:	27,750 ha
Founding:	1999 (IUCN Category II)

The Prespa National Park ( Albanian  Parku Kombëtar i Prespës ) is a 27,750 hectare national park in south-eastern Bania . It has an international protection status as a national park ( IUCN category II ).

The area includes the southwestern, Albanian part of the Prespa Lake and the Kleiner Prespa Lake with their banks and the surrounding area. In the northwest lies the Mali i Thatë ( 2287  m above sea level ). The municipality of Pustec and some villages in the municipality of Devoll are located within the park. The secluded area is in the area of ​​the Green Belt .

The national park was created by law of 1999. It was the result of efforts on all three sides of the border to better protect the area , which is particularly important for migratory birds . The driving forces behind the project, along with an Albanian nature conservation organization, were the German Society for Technical Cooperation  and Euronature . Protected areas in North Macedonia and Greece , which were connected by the Albanian Park, have existed for a long time with the Galičica National Park and the Prespes National Park. There is also a trinational agreement that is supposed to regulate the protection of the Prespa lakes beyond the national park borders.

The lake is very rich in fish and a habitat for many rare animal and plant species. It is particularly important as a breeding and wintering place for many rare bird species, for example the great white pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) and the Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus) . The Prespa lakes are particularly worthy of protection wetlands in the sense of the Ramsar Convention .

Around half of the area is forest. 7,000 hectares are part of the core zone, mostly in remote, mountainous areas. The water area covers about 5000 hectares.

There are several old chapels on the shores of Lake Prespa and on the island of Maligrad. Caves testify to the long history of settlement in the area.

From the North Macedonian border in the north, an asphalt road leads south, which opens up the villages on the west bank of the lake. It leaves the park in the southwest at the Qafa e Zvezdës pass (German: Star Pass , 1099  m above sea level ) in the direction of Korça . The villages in the south on the Kleiner Prespa lake are accessed by another road. Around 5000 people live in the national park - the twelve villages belong to the development zone. A buffer zone lies between this and the core zones.

literature

• Gabriel Schwaderer, Annette Spangenberg: Prespa-Ohrid region . EuroNatur Service , Radolfzell 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027579-1 .
• Wolfgang Fremuth (Ed.): Albania. Guide to it's Natural Treasures . Publishing house Herwig Klemp, Hatten u. Tirana 2000, ISBN 3-931323-06-4 .

Web links

Commons : Prespa Lake  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the National Park Administration (Albanian, English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Rrjeti i zonave të mrojtura në Shqipëri. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: Ministria e Mjedisit. March 2014, archived from the original on September 5, 2017 ; Retrieved January 15, 2015 (Albanian). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Prespa | Protected Planet. Retrieved August 23, 2018 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Gabriel Schwaderer, Annette Spangenberg: Prespa-Ohrid region . EuroNatur Service , Radolfzell 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027579-1 .