Dzūkija

Dzūkija National Park was established in 1991 in southern Lithuania, in the Dzūkija region, and at some 559 km² it is the largest national park in the country.

Its landscape is defined by sand: the ground is an extensive sandur, a plain of material laid down by the meltwater of the last ice sheet, on which grow continental pine forests of great extent. The Ūla and Merkys rivers, tributaries of the Nemunas, cross the park in incised meanders, and among the pinewoods appear fixed inland dunes, peat bogs and small lakes.

The poverty of the soil shaped the life of its inhabitants: farming was marginal and the communities of Dzūkija traditionally lived on what the forest gave, with the gathering of mushrooms and berries, beekeeping in hollowed logs and resin tapping as their central activities. That culture survives and forms part of the protected heritage, along with villages of wooden architecture such as Zervynos and Musteika, declared ethnographic ensembles. The wildlife includes elk, wolf, beaver, capercaillie and a rich forest birdlife.