New management plan for Nature Park “Vitosha” authorizes construction works in the mountain

According to the draft plan, presented to the public consultative council on July 30, near the village Kladnitza, Sofia, all the high and middle part of the Vitosha Mountain from the north and west is opened for construction work in so-called Huts area, buildings for shelter, administrative centers and maintenance centers of the park and also sports facilities. According to the contractor of the project Proles Engineering Ltd. (the same that executes the project plan for the National Park "Pirin") Vitosha has many huts and tourists, so you can't leave space for biodiversity conservation. The area for buildings and facilities is very extensive. It includes many forests and habitats. Stone rivers, exclusive for Vitosha, are placed in the same area, in which buildings and facilities are planned to be built. A fictious ban of construction works is proposed - it prohibits the construction of hotels, huts, manufacture buildings, warehouse buildings and infrastructure buildings, but it leaves the door open for any type of other construction, such as apart-complexes.

Nature reserves won't have any buffer zone and there will be no areas with strict protection (the territory with guided protection regime no longer exists in the current plan). Thus, the nature reserves will share borders with the areas of buildings and facilities, respectively ski slopes could be in close proximity with the protected biodiversity areas. The nature reserves are supposed to be zones with strict protection - if the built areas and the protected places don't have buffer in-between, this will drastically reduce the areas inhabited by wild animals, there will be unauthorized penetration in areas with strict protection.

It is unclear how and where forestry, agriculture and hunting are carried out, because there are no separate areas (as in the current plan) for forests, grasslands and game breeding activities. The draft plan provides a large area, formally dedicated to the conservation of priority habitats, and its effective use is to have also hunting, forestry and agriculture opportunities. But, within it, there's no definition exactly where these activities could be possible.

There are areas for conservation of priority habitats and habitats, forming specific rock and geological formations, river habitats and habitats of conservation significance. This area does not protect the most valuable areas across North Vitosha (such as "moors", old spruce forests, peatlands, almost non-existing in Bulgaria sub-arctic willows). According to the contractor, these treasures must be in the areas for tourism and huts, because there are tourists.

It remains unclear what's the need for changes in the zoning of National Park "Vitosha" - no reason for such plans seems to exist.
The proposal of members of Coalition "Let Nature Remain" for a regime in construction works is not accepted. It reads: "Prohibition of construction, apart from catchments for drinking water, treatment facilities, buildings and facilities for the needs of park management and visitor services, underground communications, repairs and reconstruction of existing buildings without increasing floor space, repairs of existing roads, repair and reconstruction of sports facilities within the existing clearings." Instead, the draft plan perceives old, controversial action, which practically does not prohibit construction in the mountains.