Divjakë-Karavasta

Divjakë-Karavasta National Park was created in 2007 on the Adriatic coast of central Albania and protects some 222 km² around the Karavasta lagoon, the largest in the country and one of the largest in the Adriatic.

The lagoon is separated from the sea by a dune bar covered in stone pine and Aleppo pine, and its system also includes brackish marshes, islets, channels and flooded woodland. It has been a Ramsar site since 1994, one of the first in Albania.

Its international value is ornithological and very specific: the islets of the lagoon hold one of the last breeding colonies of Dalmatian pelican in the Mediterranean, a threatened species whose European population is concentrated in a few Balkan wetlands. The Karavasta colony has fluctuated greatly over the decades and is the subject of monitoring and specific protection measures, including the building of nesting platforms. The wetland also hosts flamingos, herons, spoonbills and large winter concentrations of wildfowl. Poaching, agricultural pollution and coastal tourist development projects are its main threats.