Facts About Tatra National Park
Tatra National Park is a National Park located in the Tatra Mountains in Tatra County, in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Małopolska region, in central-southern Poland.
The Park has its headquarters in the town of Zakopane.
The Tatra Mountains form a natural border between Poland to the north and Slovakia to the south, and the two countries have cooperated since the early 20th century on efforts to protect the area. Slovakia created an adjoining national park, and UNESCO later designated the combined effort a transboundary biosphere reserve.
The first calls for protection of the Tatras came at the end of the 19th century. In 1925 the first efforts to create a national park, in cooperation with Slovakia, took place.
Formally the park was created in 1937, on an area that belonged to the state forests authority. In 1947, a separate administrative unit, Tatra Park, was created.
In 1992, the Polish and Slovakian national parks in the Tatras have jointly designated a transboundary biosphere reserve by UNESCO, under its Man and the Biosphere Programme.
Tourism was first developed in the Tatras in the late 19th century and continues in the 21st. It is the most visited of the national parks in Poland.
There are more than 270 kilometres of hiking trails in Tatra National Park.
The National Park contains several endemic fauna species, and many endangered and protected ones. Animals include the Tatra chamois and marmot, both protected since the mid-19th century; brown bear, Eurasian lynx, grey wolf, European otter, lesser spotted eagle, and falcon.
The largest lakes is Morskie Oko with an area of 349,000 m² and the maximum depth of 50.8 metres, Wielki Staw with an area of 344,000 m² and the maximum depth of 79.3 metres.