Wilderness

The last roadless valley in Slovakian Carpathians Mountains!

We consider the Slovakian Carpathians mountains as the last extensive areas with wild nature and Wilderness. The truth is that this mountains are still homeland for number of threatened species. This includes the full spectrum of Carpathians carnivores such as wolf, lynx, brown bear or wildcat. The situation with real Wilderness, that means areas without extractive uses and roads, is not so optimistic.

Please also read: Roadless areas and Wilderness

Carpathian Mountains and Wilderness

Humans settled in the Carpathians mountains already for millennia and so impact of human activities is visible almost everywhere. Nevertheless there are still fragments of areas with almost any visible human intervention. European Wilderness Society maps these areas because they are important partners and model for Wilderness restoration in the coming years.

Besides large unfragmented Wilderness areas in Retezat NP, Romania or Gorgany Nature Reserve, Ukraine the last unfragmented piece of Wilderness in the size of cca 6000 ha (without any road) can be still found it the northern part of Slovakia, at the territory Tatra National Park. The upper watershed of Jalovecka Valley for example. Due to the big flood in the 50s it became an excellent example how mother nature can spontaneously re-wild a piece of the land. However, only if man keeps hands of and is just a careful observer.

2 thoughts on “The last roadless valley in Slovakian Carpathians Mountains!

  • Because the industrial history of Slovakia and particularly history of forestry development many people strongly believed (and still believe) that we have to have our country (and so means also nature) under the control. The control means also ability to act in so to say prevent any spontaneous nature event in the forest such as windstorm, insects outbreak, avalanches and if this anyhow going to happen we people have to act and fix the consequences of this nature dynamism. The true is anyhow that this mentality is very common all over the Europe…

    There are already examples throughout the Europe where systematically old roads are step-by-step extracted. Very good example is Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany but also many kilometers of old gravel roads were abandoned and not used anymore (and so naturally restored) in wilderness of Kalkalpen NP, Austria, Borjomi Kharagauli NP, Georgia, Central Balkan NP, Bulgaria, Retezat NP, Romania.

  • Why is in Slovakia only one roadless valley? Is there any plans to extract some roads from other part of protected areas?

    Thank you for your answer.

    Viera

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