Pan Parks - The International Network Of Protected Areas And Tourism Development

The international and regional programmes constitute a solid basis for collaboration aimed at preservation of biodiversity and protected areas, in regional and global scale alike. Their role for the tourism sector became more important with the adoption of the concept of sustainable tourism together with the concept of development of alternative forms of tourism. PAN Parks – the European network of protected areas is also a good example of such initiatives. It constitutes a network of protected areas, namely national parks, which has the aim to preserve the most valuable species of the European wild nature, spreading from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean. It is a European non-governmental organization, created as an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) together with the Holland tourist company Molecaten Group. PAN parks preserves the most valuable wilderness areas on the Old continent through establishment of a network of parks. The latter develop sustainable tourism in collaboration with the local communities. This paper observes the core points of this initiative, its certification criteria as well as the main characteristics of the existing biodiversity within the PAN Parks areas. An emphasis is placed upon the Bulgarian national parks of Rila and Central Balkan, which are considered as resources for ecotourism development.