The nature we (don’t) love
Sharri and the Accursed Mountains amidst garbage.
Sharri and the Accursed Mountains, both protected as national parks, are symbols of Kosovo’s natural beauty. Yet, despite their status, they remain unprotected from continuous pollution.
Instead of tales of green forests and crystal-clear rivers, during summer days, reality tells a different story — forests littered with garbage and rivers with water that flows through layers of waste.
In the gorges and slopes where streams once flowed freely, bags, bottles and other plastic products now blanket the landscape. Instead of birds and leaves, the eye catches piles of garbage scattered through the forests: plastic bags hanging from branches, bottles lodged in roots, and car tires lying along the riverbed.
In winter, snow temporarily conceals this man-made landscape. But as soon as it melts and the weather warms, the waste resurfaces, exposing our shared responsibility, of visitors, businesses and institutions alike. Summer reveals the true face of the national parks, from Brezovica and Prevalla in Sharr to the valleys of Rugova.
Visitors who come to these parks for their freshness and natural beauty often leave behind food and drink waste. The public enterprises responsible for maintaining the parks fail to do their job. Many containers overflow and remain unemptied for weeks. Often, they themselves become open dumps, from which waste is scattered in every direction — sometimes by animals, sometimes by the wind.
Every stream carrying plastic and cans, every bus stop buried in trash, every pile of uncollected waste makes it clear: this is not merely a problem of missing containers or irregular cleaning. There is a lack of individual responsibility when it comes to public spaces, compounded by institutional failure.
In Sharr and the Accursed Mountains, where people seek coolness and tranquility during the summer, the spread of garbage exposes the grim reality of Kosovo’s national parks.
The question, which lingers between the refreshing air these parks offer and the trash that trails our steps, is simple: How can we speak of the beauty of nature when we bury it under waste?
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- This story was originally written in Albanian.