The Ecology of Europe's First Wild River National Park

What the declaration establishes

The Vjosa Wild River National Park, declared on 15 March 2023, protects over 400 km of free-flowing river across 12,727 hectares in Phase I, under IUCN Category II.

The river and its surroundings host over 1,100 animal species; among them, 13 animal species and 2 plant species are assessed as globally threatened on the IUCN Red List.

Those sentences are the sourced spine of everything else on this page.

Why the corridor keeps changing shape

A river without dams keeps its sediment. Floods redistribute gravel, rebuild side channels and rework the banks, so the mosaic of habitats the species counts describe is itself a moving target.

That dynamism is what the protection exists to keep. It is also why honest guidance for this river conditions every plan on current water rather than a fixed route.

Where the sourced record stops

Per-species lists and habitat-by-habitat counts beyond the declaration's own figures are not part of the sourced record we cite here, so they do not appear. The two notes that follow this one — on fish and on birds — are written under the same restraint.