Uvac
Увац
Interesting facts
- A griffon vulture from Uvac injured in Poland was flown home by the Polish ambassador and named Uroš the Weak, after the last Serbian emperor.
- By 2020 trackers had been fitted to 327 vultures from the reserve, and the birds had been recorded at some 4,000 locations in 22 countries.
- A young female named Dobrila, found exhausted on the Turkish–Syrian border during her first long flight in 2018, was flown back to Uvac by plane.
- Some vulture chicks here are so well fed that they reach 12 to 13 kg instead of 8 to 9, fall into the lakes and are returned by rangers.
- The Ušak cave system links the Ušak and Ledena (Ice) caves through a pit called Bezdan, the Abyss, and is estimated to be about 250 million years old.
- Griffon vultures from around Trebinje in Bosnia moved to Uvac after war broke out in 1992; from 2015 Uvac birds were sent back to repopulate Trebinje.
- Cameras at the feeding site have recorded cinereous and Egyptian vultures, two species that had disappeared from the area.
- In local folk belief the griffon vulture was clairvoyant, could foretell storms and live more than 500 years, and harming one brought the wrath of the gods.
- Before reaching the Lim, the Uvac forms the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina for about 10 kilometres.
- Uvac is one of the rare nesting areas of the goosander in Serbia and holds the largest recorded population of this duck in the Balkans.
Why it is worth it
In southwestern Serbia the Uvac river winds through a limestone canyon in a series of meanders so tight that the loops almost close on themselves, leaving narrow fingers of rock and forest jutting into green water. The gorge is cut 200 to 300 metres into the plateau, 350 metres at its deepest, and near the village of Gornje Lopiže the meanders themselves stand around 100 metres high. Twelve lookouts have been laid out along the rim; Veliki Krš, Veliki Vrh and Molitva, the Prayer, are the three from which the best-known pictures of the bends were taken. Overall the river is about 115 km long, yet its source and its mouth on the Lim, across the border in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are only some 40 km apart.
Much of the water seen from the lookouts is held back by dams. Three hydroelectric plants built between 1960 and 1979 turned stretches of the river into the lakes of Radoinja, Zlatar and Sjenica, and the flooded meanders are what give the gorge its sculpted outline. The valley sits in the Stari Vlah–Raška highlands between the Zlatar, Javor and Jadovnik mountains, in karst country full of sinkholes and caves; the Ušak system, of which more than 6 km has been explored, ranks among the longest caves in Serbia.
The gorge is also the stronghold of the griffon vulture, a carrion eater with a wingspan of up to three metres. When part of the valley was first protected in 1971, the local population had shrunk to a handful of birds, and only about ten remained in 1990, while the species had vanished from much of the surrounding region. A feeding site opened in 1994, and by 2017 Uvac held around 110 nesting pairs and close to 500 birds, the largest colony in the Balkans. Birds tagged here have been tracked as far as Spain and Yemen. In all, 172 bird species have been recorded in the reserve, which covers about 75 km² and was voted one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Serbia in 2008.
Getting there
The gorge lies between the towns of Nova Varoš, about 10 km away, and Sjenica, about 18 km away. The nearest airport is Morava Airport (KVO) near Kraljevo, about 68 km away in a straight line; Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (BEG) is about 158 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Uvac is a trans-boundary river that rises in southwestern Serbia and flows into eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it eventually joins the Lim river. Rising under Serbia's Golija mountain and Pešter plateau, the Uvac flows through southwestern Serbia before crossing into eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina where, after 115 km, it finally meets the Lim river from the right. However, before it empties into the Lim, the Uvac forms the border between the two countries for a 10 kilometers. Also, while meandering through Serbia, the Uvac loosely marks the northern border of the Raška region.
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