Vakıf Çamlığı Nature Conservation Area is not a visitor site. The Directorate General of Nature Conservation and National Parks lists its facilities as none, its concessionaire as none, its capacity as one visitor and one vehicle, and its activities as scientific research. Its protection strategy is stated just as plainly: keep the ecosystem as it is and put it at the service of scientific work.
What is being kept is a single tree. The area in Tavşanlı district of Kütahya province is, the directorate says, the only natural range in the world of the Ehrami black pine, a rare and endangered variety of black pine, which is why protecting it is essential. The tree grows to 20 metres and 50 to 55 centimetres in diameter, evergreen, heavily branched, cylindrical or pyramidal in outline, and the directorate describes it as highly decorative.
The area was first set aside as a nature conservation area at 292.5 hectares by a ministerial approval dated 8 June 1988, numbered OGM.MP.1.TKA.11114/25. Under article 3 of National Parks Law no. 2873 it was redrawn at 685 hectares in 1993. A ministry approval dated 23 September 2020, numbered 1572019, cut it to 447.80 hectares to resolve problems arising from private ownership and to follow the range of the principal species.
Alongside the pyramidal black pine grow ordinary black pine, oak, the Ebe pine variety, juniper, white willow, aspen, dog rose, cornelian cherry and lime. Greek tortoise, Caspian whipsnake, Caucasian squirrel, common buzzard, short-toed snake eagle, wolf, red fox and wild boar are recorded. The site is 45 kilometres from Kütahya, 40 of them asphalt and 5 unsurfaced: from the Kütahya-Tavşanlı road at Aliköy village, follow the Vakıf village road and turn left one kilometre past Vakıf.
- Designated
- 8.06.1988
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kütahya as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.5 °C in January to 20.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (76 mm) and lightest in August (18 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
