Srebarna Nature Reserve

Srebarna Nature Reserve lies in north-eastern Bulgaria, beside the Danube and some eighteen kilometres from Silistra, and protects some 6 km² around a shallow freshwater lake connected to the river.

It is one of the most important wetlands on the lower Danube. The lake, ringed by an extensive belt of reedbed, holds the most important breeding colony of Dalmatian pelican in Bulgaria and one of the few left in Europe, along with pygmy cormorant, purple heron, spoonbill, glossy ibis and bittern. Around two hundred bird species have been recorded in the reserve, many of them threatened at a continental scale, and the wetland is a staging post on the Via Pontica flyway.

Srebarna was one of the seventeen designations with which Bulgaria joined UNESCO's MAB programme in 1977, and in 2017 it was renewed under the new biosphere reserve model. In 1983 it was inscribed on the World Heritage List as a natural property, alongside Pirin National Park; for years it stood on the List of World Heritage in Danger because the lake had been cut off from the Danube and its water conditions had deteriorated, a situation put right by restoring the river connection. It is also a Ramsar site.