Half a dozen Dalmatian pelicans fly off as we approach the Narta lagoon, a marshland near Vlora in south-west Albania. It is a majestic sight – six elegantly soaring birds, with necks tilted back and wingspans almost matching that of an albatross. “They’re juveniles,” says Taulant Bino, head of the Albanian Ornithological Society (AOS). “They […]
Tag: Albania
Albanian Government bans hunting of migrating birds
Last July, novelist and bird-watcher Jonathan Franzen wrote a devastating account for National Geographic magazine about the mass slaughter of migrating birds across the Mediterranean. The situation, he wrote, was especially dire in Albania, which lies along a major migratory flyway. Due to indiscriminate hunting, the skies above Albania were literally being emptied of birds. […]
Balkan lynx conservation unifies neighboring countries
They still call the Balkans “the Powder Keg of Europe.” For good reason too: bloody ethnic and religious conflicts in the past decades have left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. As recently as 2001, the army in Macedonia was fighting with ethnic Albanians, many of them from Kosovo. However, in the past seven […]