TIRANA, Oct 9 /ATA/ Minister of Tourism and Environment, Mirela Kumbaro, shared on social media data about the summer tourist season visits in the protected areas. According to statistics, until the month of August, 3.2 million foreign and domestic tourists have visited our natural and national parks, as well as natural monuments, making ecotourism an inevitable reality and so much appealing at the same time.
Minister Kumbaro also published a video showing the visits in protected areas, giving a graphic illustration of the month to month increase. January of this year started with 93,975 visitors to reach the peak in August, with 1,317,082 visitors.
Despite being a relatively small country, Albania is extremely rich in biodiversity.
Efforts are underway to expand the network of protected areas: from 5.2% of the country’s territory in 2005, to 16% of the territory in 2014. Today, 799 protected areas make up about 18% (5,263 km²) of the territory. Most of them fall into the Natural Monument category (747) and most are small in size.
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