PLITVICE - The National Park of Croatia

Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia is a World Heritage Site located at 44° 44'-44°57’N, 15° 27-15°42'E. The waters of Plitvice Lakes, flowing across limestone and chalk have, over thousands of years, deposited natural dams of travertine which have created a series of beautiful lakes, caves and cascades, in a continuing biogeological process. Its forests are a refuge for bears, wolves and many species of birds.

Geographical Location

Close to the Bosnia-Hercegovina border in the Dinaric mountain 20 kilometers (km) northwest of Bihac in Bosnia and 110 km south of Zagreb on the main road to the Adriatic. Approximate coordinates are 44° 44'-44°57’N, 15° 27-15°42'E.

Date and History of Establishment

• 1928: The lakes originally accorded National Park status, but not developed;
• 1949: Plitvice Lakes (Plitvicka Jezera) declared public property by law, their boundaries finalized, and designated a National Park .
• 1997: The Croatian Parliament at the suggestion of the Lakes Public Establishment and the State Agency for the Protection of Nature and the Environment, expanded the Park by 10,020 hectares (ha) to include most of the underground catchment basin supplying lakes and streams of the Park.

One of the waterfall in Plitvice

Area

29,482 ha, composed of the original 19,462 ha plus the 10,020 ha extension.

Land Tenure

State; in Lika province, administrative district of Licko-senjska Zupanija. Some 3,500 ha of village agricultural plots, representing 12% of the Park, are privately owned. Administered by the Plitvice Lakes Public Establishment.

Altitude

417 meters (m) to 1,280 m.

Physical Features

The cascading water features in Plitvice

Plitvice plateau lies at 650-700 m between the Licka Pljesevica (1,640 m) and Mala Kapela (1,280 m)mountains and is intersected by the headwaters of the Korana River, the Black and White rivers. The upper end of the Korana Valley overlying the dolomite stratum is a wide basin holding the upper lakes while the lower lakes occupy a narrow limestone canyon. The Plitvice Lakes basin is a formation of biological origin, a karst river basin of limestone and dolomite, with approximately 16 lakes, behind dams created during the last 4,000 years by the deposition of calcium carbonate in solution by encrustation on mosses (Bryum, Cratoneuron), algae and aquatic bacteria. This results in the building, at about 1-3 centimeters(cm) per year, 

Wonderful water fall everywhere.

of phytogenetic travertine (calcareous tufa) barriers which have created lakes of various sizes linked by cascades and waterfalls, some up to 25 m in height. These have characteristic strange shapes and contain travertine-roofed and vaulted caves. The carbonates date from the Upper Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous ages and are up to 4,000 m thick.Soil types include humus on limestone, rendzinas 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 from pollution, the whole of the surface and most of the subterranean drainage system has been included within the borders of the Park. The new areas comprise layers of karstified limestone with dolomites of Jurassic age.

The Gushing waterflows by edge of great Plitvice Lake..

Climate

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

Vegetation

There are 22,308 ha of forest which cover 75% of the Park, 6,957 ha of meadow and 217 ha of lakes. The forest comprises pure stands of beech Fagus sylvatica at lower altitudes and mixed stands of beech and firAbies=alba at higher levels. The percentages of species are 72.8% beech, 22.1% fir, 4.7% spruce Picea excelsa and 0.4% pine Pinus sylvestris. One area of 84 ha has never been cut and contains trees up to 700 years old. The forest can also be classified in terms of its underlying dolomite and limestone strata. 

Another view of the cascading water of Plitvice.

The dolomite communities comprise tertiary pine, hornbeam Ostrya carpinifolia , spruce and beech-fir forests. The limestone communities have a smaller number of forest types but cover a larger area with communities of spruce and fern, spruce in beech, coppiced hornbeam with sumac Rhus cotinus, Italian maple Acer obtusatum and heather- Erica spp. Hydrophytic communities of black alder- Alnus glutinosa, willow= Salixspp., grey ivy, reeds and bulrush communities. Alpine beech groves grade into fir and beech forests, with juniper-Juniperus, and in the valleys and on lower slopes patches of sub-Mediterranean vegetation. 

What a wonderful sight....the natural falls formation.

There is a large mosaic of meadow communities, depending on altitude, geology soils and other factors, in three taxonomic classes:=Festuco-Brometea,=Nardo-Calunatea, Molinio-Arrhenatheretea andScheuchzerio- caricatea fuscae.Threatened, endemic and protected plants include Cardamine chelido,Cypripedium calceolus,Daphne blagayana,Lilium bulbiferum,L. carniolicum,Primula kitaibeliana,P .wulfeniana,Ruscus hypoglossum and Paeonia mascula.

The calm flowing water in Plitvice

Fauna

The area is faunistically- rich, including European brown bear=Ursus=arctos, wolf=Canis lupus, European otter=Lutra lutra, wild cat=Felis silvestris, eagle owl=Bubo bubo, and capercaillie=Tetra=urogallus. There are records of 126 species of birds, of which 70 breed in the area.

Cultural Heritage

The area was the cradle of the prehistoric Illarian tribe of Yopuds dating from 1,000 BC. The Yopudic 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.

Local Human Population

The area had 1,100 inhabitants in 1949 and about 2,200 in 1990 in 18 rural communities but there are now only two small settlements of elderly households.

The cascading water of Plitvice.

Visitors and Visitor Facilities

Tourism at the lakes started in the 19th century. By the mid-1980s tourists numbered 800,000 of whom two-thirds were foreign, largely German, with peak visitation in July and August. The revenue obtained from visitor fees (US$9.00) and general income from tourism amounted to some US$2.5 million in 1986. With the outbreak of war in 1991 and subsequent occupation of the park, tourism stopped completely and many buildings were damaged. In 1996, a tourism revitalization program began. Existing tourist facilities located within the park include hotels, post office, restaurants, car parks, and sports and information centers. 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, hotel accommodation is available at Plitvice, Bellevue and Jezero (currently being removed). During 1996, there were 260,000 visitors, in 1997 320,000, and in 1998 350,000. 

That beauty flow cascading fall,

The visitor reception service has developed a system with various educational sight-seeing programs. Visitors go round the Park with a qualified guide, according to the set program. 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 to promote and give information about the Park.

The area of Plitvice Lakes is noted for its lakes, caves and waterfalls formed from deposits of travertine. The forests of the Park are a refuge for bears, wolves and many species of birds.

Any sight to behold

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.

Serene lake of Plitvice

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 program 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

Water walk way..

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. A State of Conservation report on the Park was submitted to the World Heritage Committee in 15 September 1997.