It’s been a year since violent protests by nature conservationists and the public across Bulgaria against attempts to flatten and redevelop the protected dunes close to Nesebar.  At the time, an idea was floated to create a Bulgarian Black Sea National Park, which is now starting to take shape.  The design aims to merge a number of protected habitats along the coastline, such as the aforementioned dunes, and create a new, larger protected territory.  The result will be to put a stop to any future dreams of building work that would harm the natural environment.

Over the past year, biologists from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences have been examining areas identified as being of major conservation interest as well as the Black Sea aquatoria.  These are categorised as A and B zones under the Black Sea Coast Management Act, meaning that they are closest to the coastline.  The scientists discovered sixty-one natural habitats, including two marine habitats, populated by dozens of rare species of birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and plants.  The future park will stretch across an area of fifty-two thousand hectares, mainly owned by the state and the public authorities.  The land is rich in endangered fauna and flora, unique stone formations and sand dunes, underground marine caves and reefs.

But passions have started to rise even before the opening of public consultations on the park, which will take place on 17 June in Burgas, 19 June in Varna and 20 June in Dobrich.  The proposal has been criticised by nature conservationists on the one hand, and landowners and the mayors of some coastal villages on the other, who have come together to form the National Association for the Black Sea Coast.  Both groups have even threatened to refer the matter to the European Commission for arbitration.

Opponents of the future park are angry.  They claim that, “the state is trying to impose a total ban on building on hundreds of thousands of acres of land which in practice are being nationalised under the Protected Territories Law.  That includes privately owned land belonging to more than 1500 people in the two-kilometre strip along the coast.”  Members of the Black Sea Coast Association, which recently also set up its own political party, are protesting against the fact that public debates are only being organised in larger coastal towns and not in all of the villages affected by the plan.  According to them, the park will “nationalise” almost thirty-five per cent of the land owned by Nesebar municipality and almost the same amount in Tsarevo municipality.  But public hearings won’t be held in those places.  The land belonging to the 1500 owners in question in fact makes up barely 0.75% of the area of the future park.  But for their owners these small plots are a priceless bargaining chip when new coastal hotels are built – often with money from dubious sources.

The problem is that over the past ten to fifteen years the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast has suffered from unchecked construction work and it’s now a question of preserving the last remaining unspoilt areas along the beaches.  So it’s all about reconciling private and public interests.  The director of the National Nature Protection Service in the Ministry of the Environment and Water, Mihail Mihaylov, proposes that the state should compensate owners of buildings on the territory of the future national park in the same way as happens in other countries.  However, that compensation is unlikely to be as generous as what the construction companies can afford to pay.

Nature conservationists, represented by Nature in Bulgaria, think that the way the park has been designed it won’t provide enough protection for all the different natural habitats like the Koral area, part of Burgas Lake with its rich and varied bird life, and the mouth of the Vaya River.  They point out that the European Commission has already launched fourteen infringement proceedings against Bulgaria for failing to protect the environment, five of which precisely for nature conservation failings.  The most advanced proceedings relate to the coastal wind farm in the Cape Kaliakra region above which runs the Via Pontica, one of the main migration routes for birds.

English:  Christopher Pavis