List of national parks of Austria
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Austria has six
national park A national park is a nature park, natural park in use for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state dec ...
s, all of them internationally accepted according to the
IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...
standard. The first national park, Hohe Tauern, was established in 1981. They include each of Austria's most important natural
landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
types — alluvial forest,
Alpine Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to: Places Europe * Alps, a European mountain range ** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range Australia * Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village * Alpine National Pa ...
massif,
Pannonian Pannonia may refer to: In geography: * Basin of Pannonia, a geomorphological region (plain) in Central Europe * Sea of Pannonia, an ancient (former) sea in Central Europe * Steppe of Pannonia, a grassland ecosystem in the Pannonian Plain In h ...
steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the temperate grasslands, ...
and rocky valleys.


Development

First plans for the protection of the Hohe Tauern mountain range were evolved by
Austrian Alpine Club The Austrian Alpine Club (german: Österreichischer Alpenverein) has about 573,000 members in 196 sections and is the largest mountaineering organisation in Austria. It is responsible for the upkeep of over 234 alpine huts in Austria and neighbour ...
, which in 1915-18 acquired large mountainous areas. However, the national park project was abandoned in the late 1930s and not resumed until 1971, when the federal states of Salzburg, Tyrol and
Carinthia Carinthia (german: Kärnten ; sl, Koroška ) is the southernmost States of Austria, Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The main language is German language, German. Its regional dialects belong to t ...
signed the Heiligenblut Agreement, followed by similar initiatives in Lower and Upper Austria. The establishment of each national park took several years; as conflicts of use and the question of funding had to be resolved. The parks are managed by contracts between one or more of the federal states and the
Federal Government A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governin ...
, with the financing shared equally between the Austrian government and the respective province. The national park administrations offer more than 300
green job Green jobs (green-collar jobs, sustainability jobs, eco jobs or environmental jobs) are, according to the United Nations Environment Program, "work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and serv ...
s. The park centres provide the public with educational services on ecology and environmental protection, information and leisure activities. With about 400,000 visitors a year, they play an important role in Austrian tourism.


National Parks

Of the seven national parks, four are protecting Austrian
Alpine Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to: Places Europe * Alps, a European mountain range ** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range Australia * Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village * Alpine National Pa ...
regions and three are covering waters. The largest park by far is Hohe Tauern; at , it is also the largest national park in Central Europe. The Neusiedler See–Seewinkel and
Thaya The Thaya ( cs, Dyje ) is a river in Central Europe, the longest tributary to the river Morava. Its drainage basin is . It is ( with its longest source river German Thaya) long and meanders from west to east in the border area between Lower Au ...
tal national parks stretch across the border with Hungary and the Czech Republic respectively. All of Austria's national parks meet IUCN Category II standards. The Nock Mountains (formerly also one of Austria's National Parks) had been classified as a Protected Landscape (Category V), and in 2012 it was converted into the core zone of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.


See also

*
List of national parks This is a list of the number of national parks per nation, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Nearly 100 countries around the world have lands classified as a national park by this definition. Note that this articl ...
* Geography of Austria


References


External links

* https://www.nationalparksaustria.at/en/ Official site. {{authority control Austria National parks National parks he:גאוגרפיה של אוסטריה#פארקים לאומיים