The Puljane Research Centre is a newly-restored house along the Krka River in the rural area of Puljane, just outside the world-renowned Krka National Park. The Puljane Centre is owned and managed by a Croatian company called BIOTA, which conducts biodiversity research and implements EU conservation projects throughout Croatia’s Promina region, including the Krka, Zrmanja, and Cetina rivers, Mt. Dinara and Promina, and villages in Promina and Kistanje municipalities. This Centre is being developed as a site for wildlife and nature tourism in partnership with Friends of Wallacea as a unique way to escape the crowds in one of Europe’s top tourist destinations.
The tours departing from Puljane help attract income to rural areas that normally fall outside the well-worn tourist track to the Krka waterfalls. These visits include hikes to unstudied alpine lakes, as well as opportunities to support scientists in monitoring areas surrounding the sparkling waters of waterfalls and deep karst caverns within the ecosystem that contains Krka National Park. All tourist income to BIOTA supports efforts to study and protect wildlife, implement conservation schemes such as reforestation with drones and aquaponic agriculture, and educate local communities about the wildlife living in Croatia, which includes bears, wolves, deer, and boars, as well as numerous species of endemic fish. BIOTA’s research efforts currently focus on fish, amphibians, reptiles, and bats, although tourism is helping fund data collection on bears and wolves through opportunities to track and photograph these animals with local guides.
While the Centre is not located within the park, we can access the Krka River (inside the park) from the property and many of the tour options visit areas of the park. Our research focuses on areas within the park as well as buffer zones near rural villages. Currently, tourists do not often stay in the areas surrounding the Krka River because there are limited activities and accommodations outside the National Park; BIOTA is working to show tourists more of the natural beauty of Šibenik-Knin County, beyond the Krka waterfalls.
