Jizera Mountains Beech Forests - Czech Republic

After 2 weeks without any cards, this week I've received a few, including 4 much desired cards from UNESCO missing sites. Helena sent me this card of a beech forest in the Jezera Mountains and now I've all the Czech UNESCO sites.

Jizera Mountains Beech Forests, inscribed in the UNESCO list in July 2021, located in the northern part of the Czech Republic (Liberec Region, northern Bohemia), close to the Czech-Polish border.
These forests are one of the very last mountain beech forests in Europe almost untouched by people.

 

Autor: Jiri Zuzánek

The Jizera Mountains Primeval Beech Forests, protected by UNESCO, cover an area of about 27 square kilometres on the north-east hillside of the Jizera Mountains in North Bohemia.

The area is remarkable for mixed and beech forests on steep slopes with unique geomorphology. The inaccessibility of the mountain slopes was an advantage for the forests. People preferred to extract wood on hillsides that were easier to access and did not venture to the north side of the mountains. Thanks to that the forests have been almost untouched by human activity, and they evolve based on natural principles. The most valuable internal part has about ten square kilometres and it is surrounded by a protective zone of about seventeen kilometres. The oldest trees in the Jizera Mountains Primeval Beech Forests are 350 years old; many of the beech trees are about one hundred years old – the forest grows and dies naturally. The name is a bit misleading: even though it is officially called the beech forests, it is not only beeches that grow there. In the mixed forests, you will also find rowan and linden trees, and oaks, firs or spruces grow in the lower part, some more than two hundred years old. The best preserved and most valuable parts of the Jizera Mountains Protected Landscape Area are the home to many rare animals and plants. A part of the preserve is a completely non-intervention area where nature is left to its own spontaneous evolution. It is a unique central European primeval forest in the true sense of the word. - in: https://www.visitczechia.com