COUNTRY The Republic of Croatia

NAME Plitvice Lakes National Park

The Plitvice Lakes National Park II (National Park)

Natural World Heritage Site - Criteria ii, iii

BIOGEOGRAPHICAL PROVINCE 2.17.06 (Mediterranean Sclerophyll)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION The park is situated close to the Bosnia-Hercegovina border, 10km east of Bihac in the Administrative District of Licko-senjska zupanija. Zagreb lies 140km to the north, and the Adriatic Sea is 80km to the south. Approximate coordinates are 44° 44'-44°57’N, 15° 27-15°36'E

DATE AND HISTORY OF ESTABLISHMENT Plitvice Lakes (Plitvicka jezera) were declared as public property by law of 8 April 1949, and a national park in the Official Journal (Narodne novine) No.29 1949. Accepted as a World Heritage site in 1979. Placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1992, from which it was removed in 1996. In January 1997, the Parliament of Croatia, at the suggestion of the Lakes Public Establishment and the State Agency for the Protection of Nature and the Environment, made the decision of expanding the borders of the Park.

AREA 29,482ha, which is composed of the original 19,462ha plus a further 10,020ha which constitute the extension approved by the Parliament.

LAND TENURE State. Some 3,000ha of village agricultural plots, representing 13% of the Park, are privately owned.

ALTITUDE 417m to 1,280m

PHYSICAL FEATURES Plitvice plateau (650-700m) lies between the slopes of Licka Pljesevica (1,640m), Mala Kapela (1,280m) and Medvedjak (884m), and is intersected by the headwaters of the Korana River. The upper end of the Korana Valley overlying the dolomite stratum is larger and holds the upper lakes while the lower lakes occupy a narrow canyon made up of calcium carbonate. The Plitvice Lakes basin is a geomorphological formation of biological origin, a karst river basin of limestone and dolomite, with approximately 20 lakes, created by the deposition of calcium carbonate precipitated in water through the agency of moss, algae and aquatic bacteria. This resulted in the building of biodynamic travertine (tufa) barrier dams at about 1cm/year, creating smaller and larger lakes interlinked by cascades and waterfalls, some up to 80m in height. These create strange, characteristic shapes and contain travertine-roofed and vaulted caves. The carbonates date from the Upper Trias, Juras and Cretaceous Ages and are up to 4,000m thick. Soil types include humus on limestone, rendzines and brown soils on limestone, eliminated and brown eliminated soils on limestone and humus, brown soils and the eliminated soils of sinkholes. In order to maintain and preserve the natural characteristics of the lakes, the whole of surface and most of the subterranean drainage system has to be embraced by extending the original borders of the Park. The new areas comprise layers of karstified limestone with dolomites of Jurassic age.

CLIMATE The national park lies on the boundary between a moderately warm rainy forest climate (lower altitude)and a snowy forest climate (higher altitudes). The height of 700m above sea-level or the mean temperature of -3° C in the coldest month has been taken as the boundary line between the two climates.

VEGETATION There are 14,419ha of forest, 4,543ha of meadow and 201ha of lakes. The forest comprises pure stands of beech at lower altitudes and mixed stands of beech and fir at higher levels. The percentage of species includes 72.8% beech, 22.1% fir, 4.7% spruce and 0.4% pine. The forest can also be classified in terms of underlying strata, namely, dolomite and limestone complexes. The dolomite communities comprise tertiary pine, hornbeam, spruce and beech-fir forests. The limestone communities have a smaller number of forest types but cover a larger areas with communities of spruce and fern, spruce in beech, coppiced hornbeam with sumac, maple and heather. Hydrophytic communities of black alder, grey ivy, willow, reeds and bulrush communities. Alpine beech groves grade into fir Abies sp. and beech Fagus sylvatica forests, with juniper Juniperus sp., and in the valleys and on lower slopes patches of sub-Mediterranean vegetation. There are a large mosaic of meadow communities, depending on altitude, geology soils and other ecological factors, in three taxonomic classes: Festuco-Brometea, Nardo-Calunatea, Molinio-Arrhenatheretea i Scheuchzerio-caricatea fuscae. Threatened, endemic and protected plants include Cardamine chelidonia, Cypripedium calceolus, Daphne blagayana, Lilium bulbiferum, L. carniolicum, Primula kitaibeliana, P .wulfeniana, Ruscus hypoglossum and Paeonia mascula.

FAUNA The area is faunistically rich, including European brown bear Ursus arctos, wolf Canis lupus, eagle owl Bubo bubo, and capercaillie Tetra urogallus. There are records of 126 species of birds, of which 70 breed.

CULTURAL HERITAGE The area was the cradle of the prehistoric Illarian tribe of Japuds dating from 1,000 BC. The japudic culture was followed by the Romans and from the 8th century AD was occupied by slavs. Archaeological remains include a prehistoric settlement on the site of the current Plitvice village, fortifications, Bronze Age tools and ceramics (Frankic, 1990).

LOCAL HUMAN POPULATION The area had 1,100 inhabitants in 1949 and 2,220 in the 1980s, grouped in 18 rural communities of varying sizes.

VISITORS AND VISITOR FACILITIES Tourists numbered 800,000 in the mid-1980s, of which two-thirds are foreign, largely German, with peak numbers in July and August. The revenue obtained from visitor fees (US$9.00) and general income from tourism amounted to some US$2.5 in 1986. With the outbreak of war in 1991 and subsequent occupation of the park, tourism stopped completely stopped and many buildings were damaged. In 1996, a tourism revitalization programme began. Existing tourist facilities located within the park include hotels, post office, restaurants, car parks, and sports and information centres (Ivandic and klaric, 1996, Dezelic, 1996). There are now two entries for visitors, with car parks and information offices; visitors move around the park on arranged and marked paths and gangways. Within the park, accommodation is available at Plitvice, Bellevue and Jezero (currently being removed) hotels. During 1996, there were altogether 250,000 visitors, 320,000 in 1997, and 350,000 in 1998. The visitor reception service has developed a sight-seeing system with various different sight-seeing programmes. Visitors go round the Park with a qualified guide, according to the set programmes. The visitor reception service also has information offices where visitors can obtain all the necessary information. The Plitvice Lakes Public Establishment collaborates with local and foreign media so as to give information about the Park and promote the property.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND FACILITIES There has been extensive research on travertine formation, age and structure, and forest structure. Park staff work in collaboration with a number of national universities and a permanent research station has been established, together with extensive meteorological and climatological measuring points. Hydrometeorlogical data have been collected for 20 years, chemical analysis of rainfall for 10 years and air pollution monitoring since 1982. Hydrology, soil and phenology are monitored within the park. Specific areas of research include biochemical analysis of travertine formations, water quality (for human consumption), limnology and palaeolimnology, microbiology and soil erosion, ecology of the brown bear and plant community structures. There are five meteorological and hydrometeorlogical monitoring stations. With the outbreak of war in 1991, many staff were forced to leave the park, and some facilities were damaged.

CONSERVATION VALUE The area is noted for its lakes, caves and waterfalls. The forests of the park are a refuge for bears, wolves and many bird species.

CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT The area of the Plitvice Lakes National Park is protected pursuant to the Croatian Constitution and the Nature Protection Law. Economic and any other kind of activity is possible only in line with the regulations concerning the Internal Order in the area. Management is done at a national level. The Council of Management, which consists of seven members, is appointed by the Government. The first General Development Plan of the Park was adopted by the Assembly of the local commune in 1970. From 1972 the park was run as a company operating on market principles which owned the tourist facilities and was supplied by local farmers. A Zoning Plan dating from 1986 is still valid, but environmental protection measures are not considered to be stringent enough to solve the problems which the park now faces. In 1996, the Ministry of Tourism and the park management drew up the Tourism Revitalization Program for the Plitvice Lakes National Park, with the aim of drawing visitors back to the park, without threatening the site's natural values. This programme is part of a broader project called the Programme Basis of the Functioning and Development of the Plitvice Lakes National Park. The strategy aims to increase tourist facilities at the two main entrances, thus reducing the number of through-visitors to the Velika Poljana hotel zone, to keep freight traffic out of the park, and ultimately exclude all motor vehicles from the park, and to reduce visitor pressure on the central and most sensitive zone around the waterfalls and lakes. The management is to be restructured into the Park Management Sector and the subordinate Hotels and Restaurants Sector. The short term focus is to rehabilitate the protective and research functions in the park, and to improve the visitor management system (Cetinski, 1996, Ivandic and Klaric, 1996). A State of Conservation report on the park is was submitted to the World heritage Committee by 15 September 1997 (UNESCO, 1997).

MANAGEMENT CONSTRAINTS In 1991, the park was abandoned by staff due to civil unrest in the region resulting in destruction of forest and park facilities, hunting of bears and dynamite fishing due to lack of supervision. Several villages in and around the northern boundary were also destroyed (B. von Droste, in litt., 1991). Consequently, the site was placed on the World Heritage in Danger List in 1992, from which it was withdrew in 1996. Some of the key threats facing the park before 1991 were never adequately solved. Eutrophication of the lakes is becoming a threat, due to an inadequate sewerage system contaminating the lakes. The water supply for the park and surrounding area is currently extracted from Lake Kozjak, which interferes with the water flow and the travertine formation process. However, preparations for the construction of a new effluent disposal system are under way, and in the meantime there is ongoing monitoring. The main road link between Zagreb and Dalmatia runs through the park along the edge of the lakes, with a yearly average of 7,000 vehicles per day passing along it. The high number and concentration of tourists visiting the most sensitive parts of the park, the lakes and waterfalls, also poses a threat (Ivandic and Klaric, 1996).

STAFF In 1990 there were a total of 146 staff directly involved in park management, comprising 66 within the Department of Nature and 80 in National Park Tourism. In addition, there were 100 staff charged with maintaining park facilities (D. Krga, pers. comm., 1990).

BUDGET The park is self-supporting with a gross income of US$2.5 million per year, in addition to which the State provides US$150,000 for research (undated information).

Mr Stjepan Dujmovic, The Plitvice Lakes Public Establishment, 53231 Plitvice Lakes Tel: +385 53 751000

Nacionalni Park Plitvice, 48231 Plitvicka Jezera

Cetinsky, V. (1996) Progress on the tourism revitalization programme for the Plitvice Lakes National Park. Turizam 44(11-12): 324-330.

Dezelic, R, (1996) Guidelines for protection and utilization of the Plitvice Lakes National Park Turizam 44(11-12): 293-304.

Frankic, A. (1990). Plitvice Lakes National Park. Report submitted to the IUCN conference on the Management of Protected Areas and National Parks under the Impact and Threat of Atmospheric Emissions. Krkonose National Park, Czechoslovakia. 6 pp.

Ivandic, N. and Klaric, Z. (1996) Tourism revitalization in the Plitvice Lakes National Park in the Transition Period. Turizam 44(11-12): 306-323.

Kramaric, Z. (1991) Plitvice National Park - then and now. Nature and National Parks 29(110):12-16.

Movcan, J. (undated). Plitvice. Nacionalni Park Plitvicka Jezera, Unesco.

Movcan, J. (1974). Plitvicka Jezera covjek i priroda. Nacionalni Park Plitvicka Jezera.

Movcan, J. (1983). Development and Economics in Plitvice National Park. European Bulletin. Nature and National Parks 21: 79-80.

Movcan, J. (1985). Plitvice Lakes National Park the World National Heritage Nacionalni Park Plitvicka Jezera, Spektar, Zagreb.

Movcan, J. (1987). Vorstandsmitglied Nationalpark Plitvicer Seen. Unpublished paper presented at the General Assembly of the European Federation for Nature and National Parks.

UNESCO (1993) Two years of occupation UNESCO, Zagreb.

UNESCO (1997) Draft report of the rapporteur 21st session of the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee, Paris, 23-28 June, 1997.

DATE May 1988, reviewed May 1990, July 1997, November 2000