The Ministry of Tourism, Ecology, Sustainable Development and Development of the North is the ministry responsible for nature protection issues. Poaching is the illegal capture and killing of wild animals, which has a direct negative impact on nature protection.

The situation in which the supervisors of NP Skadar Lake found themselves, and regularly find themselves, should be the last warning, above all to the Ministry of Tourism, Ecology, Sustainable Development and Development of the North, to deal with this issue professionally and thoroughly in order to finally suppress or at least reduce the practice of poaching, which threatens to permanently and irreversibly destroy the biodiversity and nature of Lake Skadar.

The reception for the supervisors and the awarding of monetary rewards by the minister to the attacked supervisors is an act of courtesy and support and no one can be against that act, on the contrary.

What is absolutely unacceptable is that the Ministry responsible for nature protection has reduced the entire situation and the fight against poaching to “an appeal to citizens to report poaching”. They have done it before, they are doing it now and they will do it in the future because we are sure that there are far more responsible citizens of this country than individuals who are not. It is worth noting that poaching on the lake mostly happens at night and by the nature of things, we cannot expect citizens to stay and sail on the lake at that time.

The Ministry should work without delay to create assumptions that:

• Employees of PE for National Parks of Montenegro are safe in their workplaces;
• That they have appropriate institutional support for the implementation of the activities that have been given to them, which they do not have now;
• To provide legal and other prerequisites for all poachers to be adequately punished for illegal activities that threaten biodiversity and nature.

Skadar Lake NP is a 40,000 ha protected area that represents one of the most important centers of biodiversity in the Western Balkans and Southeastern Europe. The lake and its surroundings are daily exposed to illegal activities, which, in addition to poaching, include illegal construction, illegal tourist transport, illegal hunting, illegal sand and gravel extraction, which contributes to the collapse of the value of this internationally important area.