Save Sinjajevina

The Sinjajevina mountain range is the biggest mountain pasture in the Balkans, and the second biggest in Europe, an over 600 km2 limestone plateau 1,600–2,100 masl, that hosts great unique biodiversity. But Sinjajevina’s rich biodiversity is not only a product of nature. It is the result of a symbiosis between nature and community, both a product and heritage of local pastoral communities’ land governance and management over centuries and millennia. Over 22,000 people live in Sinjajevina’s lower lands today, and its highland pastures are used by more than 250 pastoralist families from eight different Montenegrin tribes. The pastures are collectively governed by the different communities living in the seasonal mountain settlements locally known as katuns through local assemblies of users (zbor). Even when it is not registered yet, Sinjajevina can be considered a cluster of pastoral commons or community-conserved areas as defined by the ICCA Consortium. Sinjajevina is connected with a large part of Montenegro through transhumance, the ancient practice of moving grazing animals between two complementary places: in this case, from the lower valleys in winter, to the highland pastures in summer. This practice effectively makes Sinjajevina’s social and ecological dimension much greater than the strict limits of its territory.