Thayatal

Thayatal National Park was established in 2000 in Lower Austria, next to the Czech border, and at barely 14 km² it is the smallest of the Austrian national parks. It adjoins Podyjí National Park in Czechia, with which it forms a cross-border unit over the same valley.

The river Thaya, Dyje in Czech, runs here set in very pronounced meanders in the crystalline basement, with steep wooded slopes, crags and meadows. The opposing aspects of those slopes produce extreme temperature contrasts: on the sunny sides a thermophilous flora of Pannonian affinity prospers, with praying mantis and green lizard, and on the shaded ones, a few metres away, there are cool beech woods.

As on the Czech side, its preservation is due to a historical cause: the valley formed part of the militarised border strip of the Iron Curtain for four decades, closed and without economic activity, which prevented agricultural intensification. The park is one of the few places in Austria with a stable wildcat presence, a species that had been considered extinct in the country and whose reappearance here at the beginning of this century was a notable zoological news story; the park runs a centre devoted to the species.