Lakes Ohrid and Prespa Lake Ohrid and the Larger and Smaller Lakes Prespa lie in the border region of Greece, Albania and Macedonia. They are some of Europe's ecological treasures and are home to numerous endemic species (i.e. distinct species that only occur here and nowhere else in the world). Additionally the lakes are known as important rest stops form migratory birds. Together with the Albanian environmental association PPNEA Euronatur has already achieved that a major area has been given a protective designation. In May 200 the Albanian government established the Lake Prespa National Park which covers an area of about 280 square kilometers. A further 270 square kilometers have been designated as a protected landscape, also in May 2000. With Euronatur's support it has thus been possible to achieve a protected area status for a total of about 2000 square kilometers in this region.
Lakes Ohrid and Prespa are also of special importance because they form part of a contiguous system of protected areas on the Balkan, the Balkan Green Belt. It is of the same size as the German Länder Saarland and Hamburg and includes ecologically important areas in Macedonia, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. This green network of protected areas and connecting corridors preserves the habitats of many species, including wolves, bears, and lynx and enables them to recolonise areas from which they had disappeared.
If conservation measures are to be sustainable they can only be implemented together with the local people, not without them. To this end conservation objectives must be reconciled with the local people's interests. Lakes Ohrid and Prespa are at the heart of a model project showing how nature conservation can be combined with environmentally benign economic development. It has been presented at the Expo 2000 as a recognised international project.
Some of the activities were carried out in cooperation with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Agency for Technical Development Cooperation, GTZ).
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