Biogradska Gora

Biogradska Gora National Park was declared in 1952 in north-eastern Montenegro, in the Bjelasica massif, between the Tara and the Lim rivers, and protects 5,650 hectares. It is one of the oldest national parks in the world, and its history of protection goes back to 1878, when Prince and later King Nikola Petrović set the forest aside as a royal hunting ground.

Its core is the Virgin Forest Reserve, of some 1,600 to 2,400 hectares depending on the delimitation, one of the last primeval forests in Europe. Its beeches, firs and spruces reach more than forty metres in height and some individuals are over five hundred years old. What makes Biogradska Gora singular within the region is its bedrock: surrounded by the limestone mountains of the Dinaric system, the reserve sits on siliceous rock, which makes it a refuge for cold-adapted flora characteristic of boreal regions and of the siliceous mountains of the Alps.

The park extends between 832 and 2,139 metres in altitude and holds six glacial lakes, the largest of them Lake Biograd, along with 26 habitat types, some 2,000 plant species and subspecies and more than two hundred bird species. The Virgin Forest Reserve has been recognised under UNESCO's MAB programme since 1977, and in 2021 part of the park was added to the serial property of the ancient and primeval beech forests of Europe.