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Albania’s Goal of Making “The First Wild River National Park in Europe”
- nedsma 5y agoDefinitely a great initiative. I was made aware what irreversible damage so called small hydro plants are doing to these creeks and rivers. Pretty much all they do is to generate additional revenue to local tycoons, while producing insignificant amounts of energy.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoMaybe a little harsh. Rivers do nothing but jam up and break up logjams, have for millions of years. Maybe it's healthy. Here in the US, the environment was mostly chains of stagnant beaver ponds for millennia. It was the Iroquoi Confederacy that kilt them all, broke up the dams. For money - beaver hats in Europe were all the rage. Remade the topology of a continent in a few score years. So it works both ways.
- stazz1 5y agoIn the Egyptian Book of the Dead, one of the things you had to attest to at death was that you had "never willfully blocked the flow of a river" -- makes sense given the prominent importance of the Nile. With respect to your comments, I think that temporary logjams and permanent human dams are not comparable.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoRemains to be seen if the human dams are permanent! In the scheme of nature, humans are just a blip so far.
- stazz1 5y agoTruly, if you consider the life of a redwood, just a blip on its radar
- fersarr 5y agoThe video makes me want to go and explore it!
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoHonestly I've had a period earlier in life where I had some opportunities for traveling and didn't take it because I'm cheap and traveling alone blows, but touring other countries and continents is still on my bucket list. And countries like Albania are easily overlooked due to low media exposure, stereotyping, and former-soviet-union things. But Albania, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary should be really nice places to visit. I don't know about Serbia or Bosnia/Herzegovina, I only know anything about that from media coverage during the 90's.
- grujicd 5y agoSerbia has nice things to see (Tara mountain, Belgrade, etc.), but if you make a Balkan tour you should not skip Montenegro. They have everything - nice seacoast with a number of old cities, mountains, lakes... And it's all condensed in small country, meaning daily trips will give you a lot of variety. Just don't go there July-August since it's packed full of tourists and traffic jams are everywhere. May, June or September are the best.
- InCityDreams 5y agoBikepacking the Balkans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZ-OglUGTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZ-OglUGTs
- ddorian43 5y agoJust a note that working as a remote developer(counted as export) there is no VAT and no profit-tax in Albania until ~$125K/year of revenue. It's 15% if you pass $125K though (for total profit).
- consumer451 5y agoHonest question I find myself asking these days about new places: are you generally safe flashing some wealth in Albania, as a single foreigner? Like for example nice car, camera, phone, mountain bike.. or best to keep a low profile?
- ddorian43 5y agoYou'll be fine. It's not a big deal to have $50K+ car.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoTrue. I think everyone in Albania drives a second-hand luxury BMW, Audi or Mercedes fixer-upper imported from Germany.
- InCityDreams 5y ago"imported from..." made me laugh, especially as I know a couple of 'importers'. BTW and fwiw, I loved being in Albania, also Macedonia. Bulgaria was cool, and Romania is crazy hilarious.
- aunty_helen 5y agoI found Tirana weird given how many flash cars there were. 750i’s and s600’s just driving around like they were doing laps on a Friday night. However, there was also some very nice streets with new bars and restaurants. Like a lot of people had recently been pouring cash into the place which is always a good sign. The people who I met were always super friendly and outgoing too, some of the most friendly I’ve experienced.
- 5y ago
- cool_dude85 5y agoDoes anyone know if there's a corresponding group in Greece working on the same goal? I'd hate to imagine a whole river as a national park but on the other side of the border they're dumping fertilizer and building dams.
- advisedwang 5y agoWikipedia seems to suggest the Greek side is already within Vikos–Aoös National Park. I'm not sure if that covers the whole Greek course of the river.
- sprak 5y agoThis is a nice goal. Will it be the first i Europe? No, Sweden has four such protected rivers: https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_national%C3%A4lvar https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_national%C3%A4lvar I'm sure many other countries have such rivers as well
- sprak 5y agoAlbania is roughly the size of Maryland and Sweden is slightly bigger than California. So one protected river in Albania would be very good news.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- medo-bear 5y agoYes, nice goal but the claim is exaggerated. In neighboring Serbia there is the Tara National Park [0], and nearby to this, but in Bosnia & Herzegovina, there is the famous Sutjeska National Park [1], which is one of the two last remaining primeval forests in Europe. That said, significant threats are still posed by potential exploitation of areas and rivers surrounding protected zones [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(mountain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(mountain) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutjeska_National_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutjeska_National_Park [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_Bijela_Hydroelectric_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_Bijela_Hydroelectric_Power...
- grujicd 5y agoTara the river is in Montenegro, not to be confused with Tara the mountain which is in Serbia.
- medo-bear 5y agoThank you for that. I actually did confuse the two! The Tara river [0] and the Tara Canyon [1] are absolutely amazing! To add to the confusion all the mentioned national parks are very close to eachother [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(river) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(river) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_River_Canyon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_River_Canyon
- iqanq 5y ago
- pell 5y agoYour point being?
- lacksconfidence 5y agoPerhaps you were thinking Algeria? Albania is found nearby Greece and Italy, certainly European.
- sibane 5y agoCurious thing to fixate on. Are you perhaps implying that the presence of Islam and their Communist past turn make them un-European? Despite being geographically situated right between Rome and Athens?
- nexuist 5y agoAs an Albanian myself I have yet to meet anyone who thinks Albania isn't European who also actually lives in a European country.
- trompetenaccoun 5y agoI'm pretty sure the person was joking. Or they just hate Albania, but in that case the likelihood is higher that they're actually from Europe and maybe even from the Balkans themself.
- dmix 5y ago> there are eight dams planned—large ones. With the tributaries, there are another 36 or 37 dams planned. The specifics are always changing—[but] currently the number is roughly 45 dams in the entire river basin. That sounds like a really aggressive engineering plan (probably with its own low carbon packaging). I can see why that would be destructive.
- sgc 5y agoAnybody who thinks you have 10 bucks asks you to invest in a micro hydro venture there. It's not planned, those are mainly just a bunch of randos who want to build their own dams. I am glad these guys are trying, but my hopes are low.
- PrancingPony 5y agoRegardless if it's first or not, this is a great goal.