North Macedonia’s parliament has voted to form a national park in the Shar mountains, the UN Environment Programme said on Thursday, in a move conservationists hope will lure the critically endangered Balkan Lynx back to its historic hunting grounds.
Lynxes need hundreds of kilometres to roam but poaching and illegal logging have shrunk the populations of the Balkan Lynx down to fewer than 50 adults, which are thought to be scattered across a few parks in the region.
The sub-species of the Eurasian lynx was listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered in 2015 — the final category before extinction in the wild.
The United Nations Environment Programme confirmed that a majority of 66 members of parliament in the Western Balkan country voted late on Wednesday to create the ‘Shar Mountain National Park’ in a decision it called “historic” after more than 27 years of debate.
Since the park borders others in Albania and Kosovo, the move will create one of Europe’s largest trans-boundary protected areas of more than 2,400 square kilometres, it added.
“This new protected area in North Macedonia would not only expand the core zone for the Balkan lynx, but would also close an important gap and hence allow the core population to expand to the north,” Boris Erg, director of the IUCN regional office told Reuters.
Most remaining adults are currently thought to be in another Macedonian park just to the south, Erg added.
The dwindling Balkan Lynx numbers stands in contrast to large European carnivores like wolves, bears and other lynxes whose numbers are mostly stable or recovering thanks to protection measures.
Conservationists blame habitat loss as well as poaching, noting that some rural cafeterias across the Balkans still display lynx hunting trophies.
Normally, lynxes prey on deer, hares and foxes but diminished hunting opportunities means they sometimes attack sheep and that has also made them a target for local farmers.
In a bid to protect them, North Macedonia has also passed rules offering compensation to farmers for livestock losses.
The Shar Mountains were of “crucial and significant importance to European bio-diversity,” said UN Environment Programme project coordinator Sonja Gebert.
As well as being the last home of the Balkan Lynx, the range contained the brown bear and numerous other species, Gebert said.
REUTERS