site.btaNovember 8, 1962: Establishment of Bulgaria's First National Park - Vihren

Vihren National Park [currently Pirin National Park] was established on November 8, 1962, in the northern section of Mt Pirin (Southwest Bulgaria), becoming Bulgaria's first national park. The other two, Rila National Park and Central Balkan National Park, were established in the 90s. 

Its territory was expanded several times since then, currently spanning an area of 403.56 square kilometers. The elevation varies from 950 meters to 2,914 meters at Vihren, Bulgaria's second highest summit and the Balkans' third.

In 1983, Pirin National Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHC). In it's WHC nomination documentation it is described in the following way: "The park has a limestone Balkan landscape, with its lakes, waterfalls, caves and pine forests, and a rich flora containing many endemic plant species. The rugged mountains, with around seventy glacial lakes scattered throughout them, are a relic of the ancient glacial days of Europe."

It is also one of the three high mountains on the Balkan Peninsula, with Durmitor (in Montenegro), Prokletia (in Albania), that have micro-glaciers. In November 2023, Assoc. Prof. Emil Gachev, research fellow at National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography - Bulgarian Academy of Science, said that they are expected to disappear completely by 2045.