Risnjak

Risnjak National Park was established in 1953 in the Gorski kotar region, in western Croatia, between Rijeka and the Slovenian border, and protects some 64 km². It was one of the first Croatian national parks and its creation was due to the initiative of the botanist Ivo Horvat.

The massif sits at the crossroads between the Alps and the Dinarides and between Mediterranean and continental influences, which produces a very high plant diversity in a small area: within a few kilometres follow beech woods, fir woods, mixed Dinaric forest and, on the summits, dwarf pine scrub and rock communities, with Dinaric endemics. It is a reference territory in European phytosociology precisely because of that compression of belts.

Its name comes from ris, lynx in Croatian, and the cat is its emblem: the Eurasian lynx became extinct in the area in the early twentieth century and returned after the reintroduction carried out in Slovenia in 1973, although the Balkan population today suffers serious problems of inbreeding. The park is also home to brown bear and wolf, the three great European carnivores. At its southern end lies the source of the river Kupa, a karst spring of turquoise water at the bottom of a deep valley.