Gorczański

Gorce National Park was created in 1981 in southern Poland, in the Western Beskids, and protects the central part of the Gorce range, a massif of rounded summits and long slopes that culminates in Turbacz, above 1,300 metres.

Unlike the neighbouring limestone massifs, Gorce is an essentially forested territory: it is covered by extensive Carpathian beech woods and mixed woods of beech, fir and spruce, largely in the process of rewilding after centuries of exploitation. That continuous forest, with abundant deadwood and an increasingly mature structure, supports a forest wildlife community of European importance, with lynx, wolf, red deer and a birdlife that includes capercaillie, black woodpecker and other species dependent on old trees.

Among the woods open the polany, grazing glades created and maintained for centuries by the region's shepherds, with their traditional huts. Those meadows hold a rich mountain flora that would disappear if the forest closed over them, so the park conserves them through mowing and controlled grazing: it is a clear case of active management of a semi-natural landscape within a protected area. The range is also linked to the figure of the writer Władysław Orkan, who portrayed it in his work and whose name is borne by one of the main trails.