First working meeting on a new UNESCO nomination

The establishment of the series site would be a natural extension of the scope of the already existing since 2007 world heritage site “Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians”, situated on the territory of Slovakia and Ukraine, which has already once been extended with the inclusion of “Ancient Beech Forests of Germany”. The proposed additional extension of the site is a result of multilateral meetings of experts from the whole of Europe, who have proposed and voted a list of well preserved, representative, natural beech forests from the 12 regions in which the species has disseminated. The goal of the extension is to achieve a greater representativeness and to take an all-round approach in protecting primeval beech forests – the common heritage of Europe.
Among the suggested territories for inclusion in the series transnational site is a part of Central Balkan National Park. The component “Central Balkan” is represented by the nine natural reserves, falling in the territory of the Park – Boatin, Tsarichina, Kozya stena, Steneto, Stara reka, Dzhendema, Severen Dzhendem, Peeshti skali, and Sokolna. Bulgarian law gives the category reserve highest degree of protection of representative territories of great natural value. This is a proof that Bulgarian State has already provided for the protection of these territories, and they quite deservedly could be established as an integral part of a series site of world heritage.

In the beginning of 2015 the partners of the series site, according to the schedule they had adopted, presented to UNESCO Secretariat a document containing definite sites for inclusion of their territory into the indicative list of the World Heritage convention. After the Vienna meeting the start of the preparation of the common nomination dossier of the partner states has been given. It is due to be presented to the UNESCO experts at the end of the month of September in 2015.