Partnership activities within the PORALIST project and the results of field research conducted by the scientific staff of the Institute for Medicinal Plants Research “Dr Josif Pančić”, resulted in a unified and innovative model for monitoring the state of biodiversity in two neighboring municipalities covered by project activities.
The goal of establishing the PORALIST platform is to create preconditions in Prijepolje and Bijelo Polje for sustainable use and improvement of protection of extremely rich and diverse biodiversity, as a very important and unique natural resource of the cross-border territory. In addition, the platform offers the opportunity for the two territories to create an opportunity for new stable sources of income for the local rural population through joint management and thus contribute to improving the quality of life in rural areas. After various project activities carried out in the past twenty months, an observatory was created, which provides comprehensive information on the sites and presence of mapped plants in the municipalities of Prijepolje and Bijelo Polje. In addition to this data, the platform offers a number of other useful datato improve knowledge about medicinal ingrediences, measures and techniques for collecting medicinal plants, opportunities to start business in this sector, as well as connecting natural resources with other sectors, primarily tourism and gastronomy. The PORALIST platform offers information on hiking and biking trails, rural households and other tourism and catering facilities in the cross-border area and as such represents a significant resource and a valuable database that may benefit to an increasing number of tourists who decide for vacation in nature, in the current pandemic, away from the crowds of urban centers.
The contents of the platform are available at the following address www.poralist.rrazlatibor.rs.
‘PORALIST’ is an EU-funded project implemented under IPA CBC programme Serbia – Montenegro.