Krkonoše

Krkonoše National Park was established in 1963 in northern Czechia, beside the Polish border, and protects some 363 km² of the southern side of the Giant Mountains. It was the first Czech national park.

The range is the highest in the Sudetes and culminates in Sněžka, which touches 1,603 metres and forms the border between the two countries. Despite its modest altitude, the climatic conditions of the summits have allowed a belt of arctic-alpine tundra to persist, with plant communities relict from the glaciations that exist nowhere else in central Europe, alongside high-altitude mires, glacial cirques with lakes and mountain grassland.

The massif's spruce forests suffered one of the greatest forest disasters in Europe from acid rain coming off the coal-fired power stations of the so-called Black Triangle, between Czechia, Poland and the former GDR, with mass mortality between the 1970s and the 1990s; reduced emissions have allowed a progressive recovery. In 1992 UNESCO designated the Krkonoše/Karkonosze Transboundary Biosphere Reserve, of 60,362 hectares, managed jointly by the Czech and Polish parks.