Montenegro packrafting vacation

Planet

Taking part in this adventure is a lot more purposeful than just a river trip. All remaining Montenegrin free flowing rivers are dam-threatened. Tara and Moraca are no exception. By bringing in international paddlers we are raising the awareness of their importance for the country’s tourism. Therefore, we are directly dissuading the government from building hydroelectric dams, ultimately preventing it from destroying the river and the ecosystem-associated aquatic and terrestrial wildlife.
Besides conservational contribution, our trips have very little negative impact on the environment. From the starting point, the transport throughout the trip along the river is by packraft. Any waste produced during the journey is always taken to the end point and disposed in a responsible manner. While we can’t collect huge amounts, as the packrafts are small, we still encourage the participants to collect some of the waste encountered along the way. All the water consumed is drank directly from the river, significantly reducing the single-use plastic bottles, as well as water wastage.

People

Each participant of this tour, including the guides, pays a national park entry fee, as well as the river tax (included in the price of the tour). If they ever go on the river, most other national park visitors only paddle a short section of the river, paying much smaller fees, as the price is adjusted to the distance paddled. We paddle the entire kayakable length of the river, making an invaluable and disproportionate contribution to Montenegrin National Parks. The money received from the fees and taxes fully funds the wages of the national park rangers. The areas of Montenegro we run this tour in are mostly rural, considered as a transit zone by most tourists, away from the popular Montenegrin Adriatic coast. The incomes here are significantly lower, and job opportunities are a few and far between, with most families relying on a single salary. As a result, the park ranger jobs maintain entire households and prevent family members from involuntary displacement to other areas of Montenegro or abroad.
The families supported through the direct or indirect contributions from these tours come from traditional, rural agricultural households. In a country of 600 000 people, of whom the majority live in the cities, our contributions do make a difference. If there were no jobs in this area or consumers to sell their product to, these families would most likely be uprooted and forced to work in the cities or in the coastal service industry. With that, an array of threatened traditional agricultural practices, including bee-keeping, cattle farming and cheese and wine production, would disappear.