Veľká Fatra

Greater Fatra National Park was established in 2002 in central Slovakia and protects some 404 km². It had previously been a protected landscape area since 1973, and its elevation to national park formed part of the reorganisation of the Slovak network of protected areas at the beginning of the century.

The massif is fundamentally limestone and dolomite, with long ridges, deep valleys, gorges and karst forms, and it culminates above 1,590 metres. Woodland covers most of its area: beech, fir and mixed forests that at higher altitudes give way to mountain meadows and scrub.

Its most notable botanical feature is the yew. The Greater Fatra holds the largest population of common yew in Europe, with hundreds of thousands of trees concentrated above all on the limestone slopes of the Harmanec valley, a density without equivalent on the continent for a species that elsewhere occurs only scattered. The park also preserves endemic Carpathian flora on the crags and a complete forest fauna, with brown bear, wolf, lynx and a mature-forest bird community that includes capercaillie and several owls.