Slītere

Slītere National Park was established in 2000 at the north-western tip of Latvia, on the Kurzeme peninsula, and protects some 265 km² around Cape Kolka, where the Gulf of Riga meets the open Baltic.

Its defining geological feature is the Slītere escarpment, known as the Blue Hills: an ancient sea cliff marking the shoreline of the Ancylus Lake, the freshwater phase of the Baltic after the last glaciation, today several kilometres inland through isostatic uplift. Between the escarpment and the present coast lies a succession of parallel fossil dune ridges separated by damp hollows, a legible record of the retreat of the sea.

Cape Kolka is one of the most important bird migration watchpoints in the eastern Baltic: in spring and autumn hundreds of thousands of birds pass along it following the coast. The park also preserves pine woods on the dunes, broadleaf woods of great diversity and a flora uncommon for the latitude. It is also the heart of the historic territory of the Livonians, a Finno-Ugric people whose language died out as a mother tongue in 2013 and whose coastal villages survive within and on the edge of the park.