Wonderful exchange meeting in Vratsa and Belogradchik, Bulgaria

We have just had a pleasure of fantastic tour Sofia-Vratsa-Belogradchik-Sofia where we had two fruitful days of exchanging knowledge between ForestConnect project partners but also Bulgarian on field professionals and practitioners.

We started from Vratsa National park where in the surroundings of old mosk, relict from the Otoman period we heard the story of how successful management of protected aria should look like. From listing all protected species and all the work done towards preserving their presence, reintroducing an authentic one across developing sustainable tourism to educating young generations we enjoyed the beauty of this small town.

Than our hosts, Northwest State Forest Enterprise, took us to the two pilot sites visit nearby Cheresovitsa village – one with cleaning of an abandoned pasture, pruning of existing forest fruit trees and the other a site with a fruit tree planting. You can imagine our surprise when aside from what we expected to see we had also possibility to try fresh fruit from the trees…Even bananas!

After seeing how it looks like when planted and giving fruits, we moved to the Ashiklar forestry nursery where we learned about growing original, autochthonous species form the seedling. It is funny that it may seem like an easy thing to do, but there are a lot of challenges while growing a plant to become important part of the sustainable ecosystem.

Along with presentation of the activities of our host and the forestry system in Bulgaria, a discussion on ecosystem services and transboundary connectivity took some time and what is interesting that all the partners are facing quite similar challenges and problems while trying to preserve nature and introduce sustainable models for the protected aria management, endangered species preservation and human wildlife coexistence.

And of course, the most attractive thing in Belogradchik was saved for the end - walk on the rock! What a magnificent picture for the eyes! Unfortunately, pictures can’t explain how we felt at the more than 200 hundred years fully preserved fortress, charmed by its rich history, breathtaking sight far more above your eyes can reach!