A memorandum of understanding was signed today between the Ministry of Tourism and Environment and the U.S. environmental company Patagonia to designate the Vjosa river area a national park, a long-awaited and welcome move from environmentalists all over the world designed to create the first national park of a wild river in Europe.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, together with the Minister of Tourism Mirela Kumbaro, CEO of Patagonia Ryan Gellert and representatives from River Watch, Euro Natura, and Eco Albania, environmental experts, international diplomatic corps representatives and donors were joined by members of the local and international media at the signing ceremony in Tirana.

In his remarks at the ceremony, the government head said that the vision for the future is, “to build a space for a development that protects the environment, nourishing at the same time healthy generations to which we will pass Vjosa as a legacy and unexplored path in Europe.”

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Hello everyone,

I am very happy to have reached this agreement as we take the crucial step towards designating Vjosa as national park, building on a close cooperation with the global organization ‘Patagonia’, to which we owe a thank you for the fact that the organization Patagonia possesses what we need most than anything else, namely the knowhow and the experience in an area like this of protection through the National Park system of a significant part of the country, which seems easy but it is very difficult.

The path to a National Park is very complex; therefore, the government asked for help from international experts, including Patagonia, in tandem with local experts.

We are now here ready to move to another phase, from the protected area, which encompasses a very large space, in the “National Park” which will be the central part of this space, as we have already discussed with the partners in the organization Patagonia committing to a very large and multidimensional project. The Minister briefly touched upon the variety of issues and dimensions of this company. We have expanded the area of protected zones throughout the territory of the country, now accounting for 21% of the total area of the country’s territory and our ambition is to ensure that the protected area accounts for 30% under our Albania 2030 vision.

On the other hand, the moratorium on logging to protect forests by banning mass logging in all forests and the export of timber, and the moratorium on hunting have already yielded their initial results after the moratoriums have been in place for a relatively considerable number of years now. It suffices to look at the country’s satellite maps to see the big difference in terms of greenery renewal and on the other hand, look at the entire inventory of fauna and the flora species. We will keep the moratorium in place because it is a must and the facts clearly show that the ban on logging to prevent deforestation or the ban on hunting to prevent the mass killing of animals and birds haven’t hurt our economy, but quite the contrary.

The area designated as part of the National Park is a very large one and as such this is Albania’s largest National Park. As such, we are obliged to build a whole network of institutions tasked with dealing with activities concerning the content of the National Park, which will require additional and more human resources, higher capacities, knowhow, professionalism and great experience and our relationship with the organization Patagonia becomes very valuable in this aspect.

On the other hand, we believe that designating Vjosa as a National Park will deliver an economic impact in financial terms, greater than development to the detriment of the Vjosa river.