A brown bear, a wolf, a red fox, badgers, a wild cat, a European hare and a wild boar have been spotted in Shebenik-Jabllanic묠revealing the park’s spectacular wildlife
TIRANA, July 25 – Twenty hidden cameras placed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) wildlife monitoring team in Albania’s Shebenik-Jabllanic롎ational Park in early June have brought some exciting results: a brown bear, a wolf, a red fox, badgers, a wild cat, a European hare and a wild boar have been spotted, revealing the park’s spectacular wildlife. The camera trapping results will be used for the development of a management plan for this protected area, says IUCN, the world’s oldest and largest global environmental organization.
Camera trapping is a technique that has been used worldwide in recent years for research and recording of wildlife presence. Its main advantages are minimal disturbance of wildlife and the possibility to confirm and prove the presence of particular species in the area. At the same time, camera trapping makes it possible to determine behaviour and activity patterns of animals. In some cases this technique can also provide quantitative information on the population of various species.
The Animal Ecology Team Experts Bledi Hoxha, PPNEA, and Francesca Pella, IUCN, held a training on this technique for the project’s local collaborators and the Shebenik-Jabllanic롎ational Park staff. At the end of the training, cameras were set up in different sectors of the park, in order to cover the area as homogeneously as possible.
The project is now in its most exciting phase as the first pictures are being downloaded.
Purchased in the framework of the project “Institutional support for Protected Areas in Albania”, the cameras are helping the team to assess the presence and distribution of wildlife species in the protected area. The findings will be included in the protected area database, which is currently being developed, and will be used to prepare a management plan for the protected area, raise public awareness and to carry out long-term monitoring of wildlife in Shebenik-Jabllanic롎ational Park.
Shebenik-Jabllanice National Park
The Shebenik-Jabllanic롩s a protected national park located in the northeastern part of the Librazhd District, central Albania. The park covers an area of about 33,928 hectares and shares a border with the Republic of Macedonia. Elevations in the park vary from 300m to over 2,200m at the peak of Shebenik mountain. The park is one of Albania’s newest, created on the 21st of May of 2008. Within the park region dwell a number of different species, including the brown bear, gray wolf and the endangered Balkan Lynx. Further, the park is home to a number of endemic and rare plants.
The Shebenik-Jabllanic롍ountains are an area of great natural beauty and contain one of the most magnificent and breathtaking mountain sceneries in the Balkans. On the Albanian side they rise out of the Shkumbini valley at about 300m above sea level to the mountains and plateaux often up to 2000m, with numerous rivers and streams tumbling down the hills and valleys to the plains below. The Rreshpa Shebeniku peak at 2262m is one of the highest mountains in Albania. The climate is Mediterranean mountainous with continental influences. The average temperature varies from 7у to 10у and the annual precipitations vary between 1300 and 1800 mm.
