Bjeshkët e Nemuna

Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park, the Accursed Mountains, was established in 2013 in western Kosovo, next to the borders with Albania and Montenegro, and protects some 627 km². It is the largest and most recent of the Kosovar national parks.

It is the Kosovar flank of the Prokletije massif, the highest and most rugged of the Dinarides, with summits above 2,600 metres, glacial cirques, high-altitude lakes and a highly developed mountain karst. Small snowfields and relict glaciers survive on its shaded slopes, among the most southerly in Europe.

Its botanical diversity is among the greatest in the Balkans, with a high number of Balkan and Illyrian endemics favoured by the isolation and by the variety of substrates. The wildlife includes Balkan chamois, brown bear, wolf and the Balkan lynx, of which only a few dozen animals remain in the whole region. The massif forms an ecological unit with Prokletije National Park in Montenegro and those of Theth and Valbona in Albania, and a cross-border peace park between the three territories has been proposed for years. Management faces problems of illegal logging and the building of small hydroelectric plants on its rivers.