Bio-diversity

The present day situation of wetlands in Albania is the result of 50 years of war against wetlands similar into its fury only to the ill famed class war that ravaged the Albanian society for almost half a century. Similarly to elimination and isolation strategies applied by the authoritarian state on its citizens, wetlands on their part were drained and isolated hydrologically from their natural watersheds. The resulting ideological isolation both from East and West forced the country to embark into a strenuous effort of being self sufficient in terms of agricultural and industrial production. Pivotal to the idea of being self sufficient in terms of agricultural production was the need to drain and convert to arable land all those parts of territory that could be cultivated. As the result, the freshwater marsh habitat with its highly productive agriculture lands was reduced drastically and its occurrence today is close to none. This project aims at the improvement of the environmental conditions at Roskoveci wetland representing one of a handful remaining freshwater wetlands in Albania. It consists in a combination of small-scale interventions like planting of trees around the wetland in order to offer a physical and visual buffer, reed bed management and awareness raising campaign in the Roskoveci town. The project will try to promote the small wetland as a visitor attraction and valuable natural habitat for the town of the same name.

Albania