July 11, 2018 - Herceg Novi's part of the mountain massif Orjen was registered in the protected areas of Montenegro, and it officially got the status of the nature park. This finally became a reality after more than five decades of the first initiation to protect the extraordinary natural wealth of this mountain.
This is the first state decision to protect Orjen, 52 years after the first initiative for the designation of a national park in the territory of Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the geographical entity of the Orjen massif, and 10 years after the decision of the local assembly on the designation of a regional park.
Over 80 square kilometers of the Herzegovinian part of the Orjen Mountain is protected, as noted by the Director of the Agency for Development and Protection of Orjen Milja Vitorović at the press-conference for journalists held in the village of Mokrine. As she pointed out, the decision on the protection of the area is a formal foundation for the conservation of nature and all further activities aimed at the sustainable development of the Orjen and Herceg Novi’s remote areas that are rarely known in their entirety.
“The Agency has made the necessary steps to register Orjen in the Register of Protected Areas, and what follows now is the selection of managers in the protected area, training of expert supervisors who should have Mountaineering licenses and all other steps that are in accordance with the regulations,” explained Vitorović.
She adds that the Agency for Development and Protection of Orjen will also try to encourage partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina to protect the respective part of the massif, in order to jointly protect the entire mountain range of Orjen.
On this occasion, Goran Komar spoke about the natural values of Orjen and the reasons why this mountainous area had to achieve, even much earlier, the status of formal protection.
“This event is the result of work in almost two centuries of managing Orjen, both through the study of natural values and through the popularization of the mountain. I would like to thank numerous researchers, residents, and mountaineers of Herceg Novi and Dubrovnik, who for decades invested enormous efforts to study Orjen and approached a larger circle of people,” pointed out Komar.
Speaking about the natural resources of Orjen, Komar pointed out that this mountain is "completely incomparable in the Adriatic and Mediterranean belt", because in some ecosystems there is up to 40% of endemic species and because this sub-Mediterranean mountain has over 49 peaks higher than 1,500 meters, as well as because it is a great document for studying the history of the development of a wider area.
"I am convinced that the main efforts of the Agency will be directed towards the protection of natural and ambient values in the protected area. It was precisely such a constant and systematic concern that the Orjen was missing,” concluded Komar.
