Balcanes Centrales

Central Balkan National Park was established in 1991 in the heart of the Bulgarian Stara Planina and protects some 716 km². Within its boundaries lie nine strict reserves — Boatin, Tsarichina, Kozya Stena, Steneto, Stara Reka, Dzhendema, Severen Dzhendem, Peeshti Skali and Sokolna — the highest category of protection under Bulgarian law.

Forests cover close to 60 % of the park, and the beech woods extend over some 30,000 hectares with an average age of 135 years, mostly natural stands of seed origin. In July 2017, at the Kraków session, the most representative beech forests of those nine reserves, 10,989.31 hectares, were added to the transnational serial property of the ancient and primeval beech forests of Europe. The Bulgarian components cover the whole altitudinal range, from the stunted beeches growing on rock at the treeline, at 1,700 metres, in Sokolna and Peeshti Skali, to the fifty-metre giants of Boatin, the only locality representing the genetic diversity of the Moesian beech.

The park is also the only Bulgarian site awarded the Council of Europe's European Diploma of Protected Areas, which it received in 2009. Four of its reserves — Boatin, Tsarichina, Steneto and Dzhendema — had been biosphere reserves under the MAB programme since 1977, and in 2017 the national park as a whole, together with five adjacent municipalities, was designated the Central Balkan Biosphere Park under the same programme. It is home to brown bear, wolf, Balkan chamois and a notable cliff-nesting birdlife.