Hohe Tauern

The largest national park in the Alps (1,856 km²) and one of the largest protected areas in Central Europe, it grew out of the efforts of two key figures in the early 20th century — August Prinzinger and Albert Wirth — who as early as 1913 pushed for the purchase of the first parcels of land in the Amer valley. It was not officially declared until 1981, after decades of negotiation between the federal states of Salzburg, Tyrol and Carinthia. It protects the most important glaciated massif in the eastern Alps, with the Grossglockner, Austria's highest summit, at its centre, and has been decisive in the reintroduction of the bearded vulture, extinct in the Alps by the early 20th century and present once more thanks to captive breeding programmes begun in the 1980s.