The Bavarian Forest National Park embraces about 133 km² at the core of the natural landscapes of the Upper Palatinate and Bavarian Forests and the East Bavarian border mountains.
The area is about 18 km long and, on average, 7 km wide, and it skirts the border between the Free State of Bavaria and the Czech Republic.
| Adjoining
it to the north-east, therefore, is Sumava Biosphere
Reserve (Bohemian Forest), and the border between the
National Park and the Sumava Biosphere Reserve more or less follows the water
shed between the Danube and the Elbe.
Taken together, these two areas constitute the largest internally cohesive forest region in Central Europe. 98% of the Bavarian Forest's potential natural vegetation is forest, predominantly of the mixed alpine variety (half spruce, a quarter fir and a quarter beech) on steeply sloping ground. |
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The wild fauna living in the Bavarian Forest are still subjected to constant change in relation to number of species and population density.
Big predators such as the brown bear and the wolf have been extinct here since the 19th century; the lynx, raven and hawk owl (Strix uralensis) have now returned.
In the past, when agriculture and forestry of a purely extensive kind occurred here, species appeared which have now vanished again (e.g. black grouse, or the lark Lullula arborea). Others (e.g. capercaillie, otter) were brought to the verge of extinction, while others again (e.g. red deer, roedeer, common buzzard) seem to have benefitted from the economic activity.
Forest species and wide unbroken habitats predominate.
In European Conservation Year 1970, before National Parks were incorporated into federal German and Bavarian law on the protection of nature, the central section of the Bavarian Forest was established as Germany's first National Park. Since then it has been managed in strict conformity with international regulations.
From 1981 to the end of 2005 the Bavarian Forest had the statue of a UNECO Biosphere Reserve.
The Bavarian Forest was selected for the Environmental Specimen Bank as a nearly natural coniferous ecosystem in a region of low mountains.
Routine sampling for the Environmental Specimen Bank will be in full operation from 1998 in the functional sub-area of Markungsgraben.
The following specimen types are collected: