12 mayors and numerous other residents of the Shushica Valley and other regions of the Vjosa National Park, activists, lawyers and scientists gathered this morning in the village of Kuç on the banks of the Shushica River. They are protesting the plans of the government in Tirana to take the water from the Shushica and channel it to the Mediterranean
Way forward for the 1st Transboundary Wild River National Park in Europe. An important step was taken on November 28th by the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy with the designation of part of the catchment area of the transboundary river Aoos in Greece as a Protected Natural Formation and
Bern Convention calls on Albania to stop airport construction near Narta Lagoon. Project in Vjosa Delta endangers thousands of migratory birds. Conservation organisations filed lawsuits against destructive and illegal construction.
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...”