Ali Botush Reserve

Overview

Ali Botush is located in the Slavyanka mountain range,  directly on the border of Bulgaria and Greece. It was established in 1951 to protect the largest forests of the endemic Bosnian pine in the Balkan Peninsula. 

The territory of Ali Botush has varied geomorphological formations. The area was for a long time in a 30-kilometre-wide border zone. This zone required a special permission to get in. That is the main reason why the nature in Ali Botush has remained almost untouched for long decades.

Slavyanka mountain, or as the local call is – Kitka (Flower) Mountain (with its highest peak – Gotsev Vrah – 2212 m), is one of the driest mountains in Bulgaria, but in spring it turns into a flower garden. It is considered a key floristic center on the Balkan Peninsula with its 1400 species of vegetation, 42 of them Balkan and 20 Bulgarian endemits, some of them over 400 years old. Here is also the biggest deposit of black fir on the Balkan Peninsula.

Its fauna includes not only the typical for the country fallow deer, wild boar, fox, and others but also more than 1200 species of insects. The most interesting of them for the scientists are the butterflies.

Ali Botush, bearing the old name of the mountain, covers most of the territory of the mountain. In 1977 it was included in the list of biosphere reserves under Man and the Biosphere (МАВ) Programme of UNESCO.