Montenegro

National Park Durmitor will use the WWF PAN parks quality standards

Virpazar, May 12, 2006: High officials and expert staff from the State Company National Parks of Montenegro and Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning attended the presentation of “Action plan for preparation for verification of the National Park Durmitor according to PAN Parks criteria”, conducted within the activities defined by the Project “Strengthening Capacities of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning (MEPPP) to Deal with Problems of Environmental Management”. The Conservation Manager of PAN Parks Foundation highlighted that NP Durmitor is one of a limited number of National parks in Europe which can meet the requirements for certification in line with PAN Parks criteria.

For the work of organizations under administrative supervision of Montenegrin Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning, it is necessary to control the quality of their work, which is determined by the quality and quantity of their services, justification of expenses and possibility of control of their successfulness. One of subordinate organisations is the Public Enterprise “National Parks”, responsible for the management of the national parks in Montenegro. In the field of protected areas across Europe, the quality standards are only being introduced recently. For this reason, the National Parks in Montenegro are not yet operating according to an internationally recognized quality standard.

For the National parks the objective is to use the quality standard PAN Parks (www.panparks.org) developed by the WWF, which is based on high quality of nature, good management, protected areas and partnership with the local community in developing sustainable tourism. The pilot project for introduction of this standard will be the preparation of the National Park Durmitor to fulfill the PAN Parks requirements.

NP “Durmitor” was proclaimed National Park in 1952 and it was registered in 1980 with the UNESCO’s world heritage list in accordance with the Convention on World Heritage. Since the river Tara canyon was registered in 1977 in the List of International Biosphere Reservation a part of the Tara river canyon within the NP “Durmitor” has a triple protection: as a part of the National Park, as a world natural heritage and as a biosphere reservation.