Walking with Wolves

Join an English-Speaking

Guided Walking Tour from Voskopoja, Albania

- Walk through beautiful scenery spotting signs of wolves and bears with a local guide and Albanian expert from the UK
- Dawn and dusk ‘wolf watching’
- Stay in a family-run B&B and eat delicious home-cooked food
- Very friendly and hospitable locals
- Meet local farmers & beekeepers to understand their way of life
- Visit churches with spectacular C18th frescoes

By coming on the trip you will be contributing to ICA’s work in the area including providing fencing for beekeepers and livestock guarding dogs to farmers and our conservation education and research programme.

Price £525 - based on sharing a twin room, includes all in country transport and accommodation on a half board basis, guide, excludes international flights.

Spend eight days in one of Europe’s most mysterious and unexplored countries in a small group. Walking through wild terrain tracking bears and wolves and looking out for wild boar, deer, pine marten, otter and chamoix. David James, our main guide pictured below, is an expert on Albania, who has spearheaded pioneering humanitarian work through the British charity ICA, for the past 15 years. The base of the tour will be the village of Voskopoja, once an ancient city rich in history, with interesting Romanesque architecture and Orthodox churches with some of the best 18th Century frescoes in Southern Europe.

ICA runs three guided walking tours a year, in October, January and May. October is the best time to see spectacular autumnal colours, May, the spring flowers and this is when the bears are out eating the grass and in January wolf tracks in the snow.

Day 1 Lunchtime pickup from Tirana airport driven to Voskopoja arriving early evening.
Dinner & Overnight family-run B&B where you will stay for the next 6 nights, Voskopoja

Day 2 Walk to a semi-abandoned village, stopping at a monastery on the way. Optional night-time watching out for wolves and other nocturnal wildlife from dusk. Dinner at Taverna Voskopoja

Day 3 Late morning start to visit the livestock guard dogs, beehives and tracker cameras. Tour of Voskopoja.
Optional evening’s wolf watching.

Day 4 Scenic hike to the Baku area or day spent with a shepherd or beekeeper.
Optional evening’s wolf watching.

Day 5 Visit Dharda a nearby mountainous area with different terrain which is more Alpine in feel than around Voskopoja, which ICA also supports, then ending in the city of Korca for dinner.

Day 6 Walk to an ex-communist chrome mine in the morning. Afternoon free, possible activities in the area are mountain biking, riding and fishing. Optional evening’s wolf watching.

Day 7 Drive to the capital Tirana, en route stopping to have lunch in Librazhd cooked by a woman whose life has been turned around through an ICA sponsored cookery course. In Tirana, visit a shanty-town and meet minority families that ICA are supporting.

Day 8 Visit another ICA project or free. Depart for airport for return flight.

Living in this rural area is very tough for the people as there is very little work and making a living from the land is difficult. Our tours directly help the local people earn a sustainable living year round and money goes directly to improving their quality of life and that of their natural environment in a number of different ways:

- The farmers, fruitgrowers and beekeepers are given sturdy steel fencing to keep out bears.
- Shepherds are given specially bred livestock guard dogs to protect their sheep and domestic dogs from wolves.
- Fewer bears and wolves are shot illegally as they pose less threat.
- The surrounding habitat is better protected through conservation education and advocacy work with local, national and governmental organisations.

Few foreigners have visited this remote part of Albania, which doesn’t even have any official maps of the area. In fact Albania has only very recently opened up to tourists since the fall of the communist dictatorship in the 1990s.
This has kept the area around Voskopoja a pristine wilderness and therefore the perfect home to around 60 wolves and 30 bears. Europe’s most endangered mammal the lynx has also recently been spotted in the area. These are all magnificent beasts that are very elusive so though we would expect to see evidence of their presence; it is only those very lucky few that get to see the actual animals themselves.

ICA has been operating in Albania since 1997. This gives David James, who leads most trips, a unique insight into the history, geography and sociology of this fascinating country. He has hundreds of extraordinary stories to tell about these friendly people who have lived through extremely difficult circumstances and is passionate about improving their lives whilst maintaining their beautiful natural heritage. Other work that ICA does in the country is sponsoring families, helping the disabled and minorities and supporting a credit union.

To sign up for a tour or find out more contact ICA on: +441380 840990 or email icauk@btopenworld.com.

TYPICAL EDUCATION STUDY TOUR - 2012

Day 1 Flight from London to Tirana or Thessalonica. Lunchtime pickup from Tirana airport driven to Voskopoja, arriving early evening. (Or self drive from Thessalonica: low cost airline route).Briefing on ICA, week ahead/safety. Stay overnight in Voskopoja.

Day 2 Transects 4 hours. Breakfast, Rest, Lunch. Shepherding, beekeeping, smallholding and forestry.
Talk and Q/A on Albanian customs and history. Stay overnight in Voskopoja.

Day 3 Transects 4 hours. Breakfast, Rest, Lunch. Shepherding, beekeeping. Talk and Q/A on the work of ACA. Stay overnight in Voskopoja.

Day 4 Transects 4 hours. Breakfast, Rest, Lunch. Small holding and forestry. Talk and Q/A on local wildlife. Stay overnight in Voskopoja.

Day 5 10 km long walk and transects in a remote area.. Visiting a remote valley and meeting with local people. Talk and Q/A on Development. Stay overnight in Voskopoja.

Day 6 Transects 4 hours. Breakfast, Rest, Lunch. Write up transects reports. Stay overnight in Voskopoja.

Day 7 Dawn Bear watches as needed. Depart Voskopoja for Tirana or Thessalonica, with a stop in Korca for sightseeing. Stay overnight in a hotel in Tirana or Thessalonica.

Day 8 Return flight to UK.

During Tour
Optional dawn watching for bears, dusk-night-time wolves and other nocturnal wildlife as requested.
Evening talks on Albania: customs, history, wildlife and more!

ACA supported by ICA, an UK registered charity, enables the rural communities in Albania to benefit economically through developing eco-tourism: walking, wildlife and visiting cultural interesting places. Conservation education, researching the numbers of bears and wolves in the area and funding live stock guard dogs and predator-proof fencing for local farmers and beekeepers are the other cornerstones of this eco-tourism programme.

Eco-tourism: helping to build local capacity to host tourists and conservationists to the area through hospitality, English and conservation training, and a website to encourage visitors to the area and running escorted tours.

Decreasing the negative impact of living close to the large carnivores: giving needy farmers and beekeepers predator-proof fencing and effective guard dogs.

Conservation research: mapping the large carnivore numbers using outside volunteers and camera traps which can be used by other agencies to boost conservation in the area and also generates funds for the local population. Albania is home to many wild plants that can be used for medicinal purposes but the destruction of many wild habitats has led to the recent decline in their numbers. By helping to maintain the biodiversity of rural areas will mean collecting these plants can continue to be profitable for needy rural communities.

Support: A percentage of the money raised from these tours goes to ACA’s work, a registered Albanian charity helping the needy and advancing education including preventative measures such as those to protect livestock, beehives and education programmes.

Automatic Cameras: To observe animals these are placed at regular crossings near their source of food and water. We also loan day and night scopes and cameras to carefully selected local educational environmental groups.
Activities

Walking. This area is ideal hill walking country, wooded with step ravines and semi abandoned villages as well as mountains over 2000 meters some 10-15 kilometres away. In winter from November until March there can be up to half a metre of snow and the new road to Korce is always kept clear.

Churches. There are 24 Churches and a description can be found under the history section. However, for keen walkers who like a challenge or mountain bikers we challenge anyone to do all 24 in 12 hours walking and 6 hours by mountain bike. Send your timed digital photos of each church and we will give/send you a bottle of Voskopoja’s finest raki!

Mountain Biking. There are trails now being marked over a large distance of varying challenges from broad tracks to some quite steep narrow paths. You will need to bring your own equipment.

Horse Riding. We give employment to local people who act as horse guides. You will need to bring your own equipment: hat and boots if you want to. Saddles are different to ours as shown in the photo.

Guides. We give employment to local people who act as guides. They know the area very well having lived there all of their lives which is a great benefit as there are few maps.

“THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”

The Dinaric Alps stretch from Croatia down to Greece and Albania are therefore an important link at the southern end of the corridors for wildlife. Hence, at international, national and local level the conservation of such wildlife is important. There are believed to be about 300 brown bears (ursus arctos), 1700 wolves (canis lupus) and only 30 of the endangered Balkan lynx (lynx lynx) remaining in the wild. It is not known whether the whole of the mountainous areas of Albania are interspersed with these mammals or whether their population is fragmented. Albania is an important link with the bears of Greece, which are at the end the southern end of the chain of wildlife.

Habitat loss has impacted on the numbers of wild animals, although with population decline from the mountainous villages this has enhanced the prospect for both bears and wolves. However, for lynx, illegal shooting is decimating the hare population which is their main source of food. This is a major problem as they are on the verge of extinction.

The bears are a problem as they are a threat to fruit trees, strawberries, maize crops, beehives, and the killing of cows and horses. In autumn they need about 20,000 calories a day equating to 300 apples each day. They give birth in January to maybe 1or 2 cubs.

Wolves help maintain the balance of wildlife and keep down diseases: ‘they clean the forest’. They frequent rubbish areas, and can attack the flocks of sheep, guard dogs, domestic dogs and donkeys. There are about 5-6 wolves per pack but they can group to 10-12 and they use eyesight more than smell. They produce between 4-7 pups in the spring.

It is estimated there are about 30 brown bears in the Voskopoja area, 50 wolves and only the very occasional lynx. Other mammals include marten whose skin is valued, wildcat, foxes, which are bigger than the ones found in UK and otter.

The loss of birds and hares due to illegal over hunting by outsiders means that local poor people do not have the ability to supplement their livelihoods with traditional foods.

For further details of our current Walking with Wildlife Tours see our downloadable leaflets.