. '' is endemic to Lake Prespa In Classical times, the Prespa region formed part of ancient
Lynkestis, and the lakes were called Little and Great Brygeis. In the 10th century, the
Tsar Samuel built the fortress and church of
St. Achillius on an island called Agios Achillios in the Small Prespa Lake, on the Greek side of the border. The biggest island in the Great Prespa Lake, within North Macedonia, is called
Golem Grad ("Large Town"), and Snake Island (Zmiski Ostrov). The other island
Mal Grad ("Small Town", in Albania) is the site of a ruined 14th century monastery dedicated to
St. Peter. Today, both islands are uninhabited. Because Great Prespa Lake sits in limestone country about 150m above
Lake Ohrid, which lies only about 10 km (6 miles) to the west, the only outlets for its waters are through underground channels in the
karst and emerge from
springs which feed streams running into Lake Ohrid. In the 1970s, the
communist regime in Albania diverted the
Devoll River feeding the Little Prespa to irrigate agricultural lands in the
Korçë area, contributing to the depletion of the lake's surface area from 450 hectares to no more than 20 hectares by 2024, with the lost area either drying out or converted into swampland. The Great Prespa also saw its surface area decrease by seven percent and its volume reduced by half from 1984 to 2020. For many years, the Greek part of the Prespa Lakes region was an underpopulated, militarily sensitive area which required special permission for outsiders to visit. It saw fierce fighting during the
Greek Civil War and much of the local population subsequently emigrated to escape endemic poverty and political strife. The region developed little until the 1970s, when it began to be promoted as a tourist destination. With its abundance of rare fauna and flora, the area was declared a Transnational Park in 2000. In 1999 the Society for the Protection of Prespa received the
Ramsar Wetland Conservation Award for its conservation efforts regarding the Lake Prespa
Ramsar site, and was eventually included on 3 July 2013. In 2018, Great Prespa Lake was the setting for the signing of the
Prespa Agreement, intended to resolve the
Macedonia naming dispute by renaming the Republic of Macedonia to
North Macedonia. The agreement was signed on 17 June 2018 in a high-level ceremony at the Greek border village of
Psarades on the lake, by the two foreign ministers
Nikola Dimitrov (of the Republic of Macedonia) and
Nikos Kotzias (of
Greece) and in the presence of the respective prime ministers,
Zoran Zaev and
Alexis Tsipras. After the ceremony, Tsipras and Zaev crossed over the border to North Macedonia's side of the lake for lunch at the village of
Oteševo, in a highly symbolic move that marked the first time a Greek prime minister set foot in the Republic of Macedonia since it declared independence in 1991. ==Wildlife==