Montenegro Geography, Climate & Nature

Montenegro occupies 13,883 square kilometres of the western Balkans, bordered by Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, with 293.5 kilometres of Adriatic coast. The coastal plain is only 1.5 to 4 kilometres wide and stops abruptly in the north-west, where Mount Lovćen and Mount Orjen plunge into the Bay of Kotor -- a fjord-like gulf that is in fact a submerged river canyon, ringed by mountains up to 1,000 metres that fall almost vertically into the water. Behind the coast the karst of the western Balkans rises generally above 1,000 metres, and the high mountains, among the most rugged in Europe, average over 2,000.

The Durmitor massif in the north-west holds the country's highest peak, Bobotov Kuk at 2,523 metres, 48 summits above 2,000 and 18 glacial lakes; its national park covers 390 square kilometres. The Tara canyon, up to 1,300 metres deep over 82 kilometres, is the deepest in continental Europe and bounds Durmitor to the north; the Piva and Komarnica canyons bound it west and south. In the south-east the Zeta valley carries the country's two biggest cities, Podgorica and Nikšić, and Lake Skadar straddles the Albanian border in a karst depression whose floor lies below sea level.

The coastal region is seismically active. Twenty-five municipalities divide the country; Cetinje, the old royal capital, sits on a small karst plain under Lovćen.

Montenegro's climate is varied for a country this size. The coast is Mediterranean -- hot dry summers, mild wet winters -- while the karst behind it, generally above 1,000 metres, and the high mountains averaging over 2,000 are alpine, with heavy snow and a ski season. The change happens in the twenty-five kilometres between Kotor and Cetinje.

The advisories give the hazards rather than the averages, and this page repeats only what they say. Wildfires are common from April to October in the dry hot weather and are dangerous and unpredictable. Flooding is a problem when heavy rain and snowmelt swell the rivers in winter and spring. Heavy snow and icy roads are winter hazards, and snow tyres and chains are compulsory from 15 November to 31 March. Coastal waters turn dangerous in autumn and winter, when waves break further than expected and cause strong undertows. The country is in an active seismic zone, with small tremors all year and the last serious earthquake in 1979.

Best Destinations by Month has the practical reading.

Montenegro's protected network is dense for its size. Durmitor National Park, founded in 1952 and inscribed as World Heritage in 1980, covers 390 square kilometres of the Dinaric Alps with 48 peaks above 2,000 metres and 18 glacial lakes; the Tara canyon within and beside it, 82 kilometres long and up to 1,300 metres deep, earned UNESCO recognition in 1977. Biogradska Gora in the Bjelasica range is a national park and a UNESCO biosphere reserve built around one of Europe's last virgin forests, with glacial lakes and temperate woodland. Lovćen National Park stands above the bay, and Lake Skadar, the largest lake in the Balkans, occupies a karst depression on the Albanian border.

The Bay of Kotor's World Heritage listing is explicitly natural as well as cultural, covering the drowned canyon and its cliffs. The encyclopaedia pages opened for this page carry no species inventory for the country, and none is invented here.

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

This page says only what its sources say, and on Montenegro's wildlife they say nothing specific: the bears, wolves and chamois of the Dinaric Alps and the pelicans of Lake Skadar are in the country as they are across its borders, but no sentence opened for this page places them, so they stay out. Biogradska Gora's virgin forest, Durmitor's glacial lakes and Skadar's reedbeds are where a naturalist would start.

The practical zoology is the advisories': ticks and tick-borne encephalitis inland, unpredictable undertows in the sea, and mountain weather that has left hikers lost off the marked paths.