Bulgaria Geography, Climate & Nature

Bulgaria lies on the eastern Balkan peninsula south of the Danube, which forms 470 of the 609 kilometres of the Romanian border, and west of the Black Sea, whose coast runs 378 kilometres from Romania to Turkey. Its 110,994 square kilometres make it the tenth-largest member of the European Union and the sixteenth-largest country in Europe. The land runs in bands from north to south: the Danubian Plain, the Balkan Mountains -- Stara Planina -- the Upper Thracian Plain along the Maritsa, and in the south-west the two highest massifs, Rila and Pirin, with the lower but more extensive Rhodopes to the east of them.

Musala in Rila, at 2,925 metres, is the highest point in Bulgaria and the whole Balkan peninsula; Vihren in Pirin, at 2,915, is the third-highest. Rila National Park, the country's largest, established on 24 February 1992, holds 120 glacial lakes including the Seven Rila Lakes between 2,100 and 2,500 metres; Pirin National Park, 403.56 square kilometres established in 1962, is a World Heritage Site. The Black Sea coast is the lowest ground; the Danube the biggest river, the Iskar the longest within the country, the Struma and the Maritsa the rivers of the south.

The country is divided into 28 provinces. Sofia, at the foot of Vitosha in the west, holds 1.28 million of the 6.4 million people; Plovdiv on the Maritsa, Varna and Burgas on the coast are the other cities of size.

Bulgaria sits where Mediterranean, oceanic and continental air masses meet, and its climate is varied and changeable as a result. Most of the country is humid continental, the highest mountains Alpine, the southernmost valleys subtropical. On the Danubian Plain the mean temperature is −1 °C in January and 24 °C in July, the widest annual range in the country; average annual precipitation is 670 millimetres, lower on the lowlands and in Dobrudzha in the north-east, the driest region at 450 millimetres, and higher in the mountains.

The advisories add the hazards: Bulgaria is in an active seismic zone, though the last significant earthquakes were in 1928; it is prone to flooding after heavy rain, usually localised but at times widespread; wildfires occur in summer and early autumn; winter tyres are mandatory in the winter months and mountain roads are not always cleared. On the peaks weather changes fast in every season and the mountain-insurance advice applies year-round.

Best Destinations by Month has the practical reading.

Bulgaria's biodiversity is counted among the richest in Europe and is conserved in three national parks, eleven nature parks, ten biosphere reserves and 565 protected areas, with a Natura 2000 network covering 33.8 per cent of the territory. Ninety-three of Europe's 233 mammal species live here, along with 49 per cent of its butterflies and 30 per cent of its vascular plants; the flora runs to between 3,800 and 4,200 vascular species, 170 of them endemic and 150 endangered, and more than 6,500 non-vascular plants and fungi. Around 35 per cent of the land is forest, including some of the oldest individual trees in the world, Baikushev's pine in Pirin among them at around 1,300 years.

The avian fauna is 434 species, the second-highest count in Europe, with almost all the true owls, white stork, common and demoiselle crane, and the eastern imperial eagle and cinereous vulture among the conservation priorities; Srebarna on the Danube, a World Heritage Site on the Via Pontica migration route, has 179 nesting species including the Dalmatian pelican. Pirin National Park, also World Heritage, holds brown bear, grey wolf, wildcat, pine marten, red and roe deer and Balkan chamois; the Eurasian lynx has a growing population.

No species-level survey was consulted beyond the sources named in the data file.

The animals a visitor can reasonably hope to see are in the two south-western parks: Balkan chamois on the Pirin ridges, red and roe deer in the forests, marmots and birds of prey in Rila's high cirques, and, for the patient and lucky, brown bear and wolf, both present in Pirin at conservation-priority numbers. The lynx is back and growing but is not seen. Birders go to Srebarna for the Dalmatian pelicans and the 179 nesting species, and to the Black Sea coast for the Via Pontica migration in spring and autumn.

The practical zoology is the advisories': stray dogs are common, can be dangerous in packs, and carry rabies, which is also in wildlife including bats, so any bite is a medical emergency; ticks carry encephalitis in some areas from April to November, worst for hikers and campers in forest.