Conservation Purpose

National parks in Germany aim to ensure that natural processes can proceed as undisturbed in their natural dynamic as possible on the largest part of their territory.

As a result of its consistent implementation of the principle “Let nature be nature”, the Bavarian Forest National Park has been recognised internationally by the Council of Europe (with the European Diploma) and the IUCN (World Conservation Union) as a Category II National Park. In accordance with international nature conservation quality standards, the park has to guarantee that those priority management aims, which target an undisturbed development of nature, are implemented on at least 75% of the park’s territory.

The Bavarian Forest National Park protects a characteristic central European, mostly forested low mountain landscape with natural and semi-natural ecosystems as national natural heritage for current and future generations. Functioning natural environmental forces and the undisturbed dynamic of ecological communities are thereby guaranteed above all. On most of the territory the forests of the national park are over the long term developing and growing without human intervention into natural forests again. Natural events such as windthrow and snow damage are, together with insect infestations and fungus disease, important factors in the natural development of the forest.

History

Back in the 1960s there was a fierce argument between nature conservationists and the tourism industry concerning the future use of the Rachel – Lusen area in the Bavarian Forest. Some argued that new ski runs and lifts in the hitherto unspoilt forested region would bring more visitors and secure incomes. The alternative was the creation of a national park, a very old idea dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century.

At the end of the 1930s plans for a Bohemian Forest National Park first began to take shape, whereby the bigger part of the protected area lay on the Czech side of the border. The work to put the area under protection by the Reich Office for Nature Conservation was stopped abruptly in 1943 in the confusion of the Second World War.

With the legendary summit meeting of Czech, Austrian and German nature conservationists on the Dreisessel peak the discussions about a large forested national park in the heart of the European continent began and have continued until today. Leading nature conservationists such as Hubert Weinzierl, the popular Professor Bernhard Grzimek, and the President of the German League for Nature Conservation (DNR), Wolfgang Engelhardt, supported the idea.

On 11th June 1969 the Bavarian state parliament decided unanimously to establish a national park in the Bavarian Forest. The further design and organisation of this, the first German national park, which was officially opened on 7th October 1970, found its scientific basis in the so-called “Haber Analysis” of 1968.

The successful endeavours were crowned in 1991 by the creation of the Šumava National Park on the Czech side of the border. Furthermore in 1997 the Bavarian Forest was enlarged by nearly double the territory to a size of 24,218 hectares through an extension taking in the state forests north east of the town of Zwiesel.

National Park Idea

The origins of the national park idea lie in North America, where the world’s first national park was founded in Yellowstone in 1872. Europe followed with its first national parks in 1909 in Sweden and 1914 in Switzerland. In 1970 the Bavarian Forest National Park became the first German national park to be established. Worldwide there are now more than 3,800 national parks in over 120 countries. In the meantime the number of national parks in Germany has risen to 14.

The national parks of North America are today also regarded as “America’s best idea” and as the crown jewels of that continent. National parks were however, then as now, the battlefields of the nature conservation movement. Some 140 years ago a battle raged as to whether the monumental natural wonders of the United States should be left to a few profiteers for exploitation or be protected in trust by the state for the whole of mankind for all time. The search for an unmistakeable national identity provided the initial impulse for the protection of great landscapes. It is the vision of great men such as John Muir and Stephen Mather that we have to thank that the national park idea was brought to fruition and that all forms of exploitation and depletion were ruled out forever on these large areas.

At the time national parks were not established primarily as refuges for the wild animals within them, but rather for human society as “pleasuring grounds for the enjoyment and benefit of the people”.

To the extent in which people‘s perception of the environment has changed, national parks in the USA and later also in Europe became increasingly important for the protection of wilderness, wild animals, and ecological processes. With the advance of ecology the recognition gradually took hold that everything in a national park is connected, and that ultimately it is the processes in their entirety that we must protect.

This signalled a radical change in our understanding of nature. It meant that wild game should no longer be fed and hunted, but that animals should go their own way, in harmony with nature. It meant, that in the boreal coniferous forest zones natural fires play an important role in the regeneration of the forests, and that they should not be categorically be quelled in national parks. And finally we in central Europe have also leant that natural events such as storms and snow damage, together with insect infestations and fungus disease, are significant factors in the natural development of forests, which should in the wider protection of the planet’s biological diversity be regarded as advantageous rather than disadvantageous.

Today national parks are theatres that enable us to look deeper into nature and teach us, what they mean for the human soul.