Wigierski

Wigry National Park was created in 1989 at the north-eastern tip of Poland, in Podlaskie Voivodeship, near the Lithuanian and Belarusian borders. It protects a fragment of the Augustów forest and, above all, a complex of more than forty lakes of glacial origin, among which Wigry stands out, one of the deepest and most intricately shaped in the country, with numerous bays, peninsulas and islands.

The landscape is a post-glacial mosaic of lakes, peat bogs, rivers and mixed woodland of pine, spruce and broadleaves, the result of the retreat of the last ice sheet. The watercourses linking the lakes, especially the river Czarna Hańcza, are classic canoeing routes and one of the main ways of visiting the park.

The European beaver is the emblematic species of Wigry and pioneering work for its recovery in Poland was carried out here; its dams and lodges shape much of the smaller watercourses. It is joined by the otter, the wolf, the roe deer and the elk in the waterlogged areas, along with an abundant water and forest birdlife. On a peninsula of Lake Wigry stands the former Camaldolese monastery, founded in the seventeenth century, one of the most recognisable monastic complexes in north-eastern Poland and today the park's main cultural draw.