Central Balkan National Park

The Central Balkan National Park (Bulgarian) is a national park in the heart of Bulgaria, nestled in the central and higher portions of the Balkan Mountains. Its altitude varies from 550 metres (1, 800 ft) near the town of Karlovo to 2,376 metres (7, 795 ft) at Botev Peak, the highest summit in the range. It was established on 31 October 1991. The park is the third-largest protected territory in Bulgaria, spanning an area of 716.69 km2 with a total length of 85 km from west to east and an average width of 10 km. It occupies parts of 5 of the country's 28 provinces: Lovech, Gabrovo, Sofia, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora. The national park also includes nine nature reserves, covering 28% of its territory: Boatin, Tsarichina, Kozya Stena, Steneto, Severen Dzhendem, Peeshti Skali, Sokolna, Dzhendema and Stara Reka. The Central Balkan National Park is one of the largest and most valuable of the protected areas in Europe. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the Park as Category 2. The national park and eight of the nine nature reserves are on the UN list of Representative Protected Areas, and four of the nature reserves are included in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves under the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme. The park was a full member of the WWF-led PAN Parks foundation. Since 2017, the ancient beech forests withi

Park data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).