Conservation Facts
Population: 38.6 million
Total Area: 312.685 km2
Population density: 124 per km2
Protected Area: 1%
National Parks: 23
“NATURA 2000” sites: 362
Largest Nature reserve: Biebrzanski Park Narodowy 592.23 km2
Resident Photographers:
Grzegorz Lesniewski
Visiting Photographers:
Diego Lopez
Stefano Unterthiner
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Poland Galleries
From the Warta Mouth National Park at the border with Germany to the deep forests of Bialowieza National Park in the southeast, from the Baltic Sea to the mountains of the High Tatra, Poland delivers many fine examples of what nature in central Europe looks like – or rather: once looked like.
Migrating Arctic swans, geese and ducks find excellent roosting and stopover sites in the lower Oder river and its tributaries and in the shallow waters of the Baltic.
In early spring cormorants return to their breeding colonies along the coast, some of them with more than 10.000 pairs, whilst the marshes of the rivers Biebrza and Narew turn into a birder’s paradise, alive with terns, bittern, great snipe, cranes, warblers and many other species that are endangered in most other countries of Western Europe where their habitats have been largely destroyed.
Extensively grazed meadows are a home for corncrake and foraging ground for white storks, where several species of amphibians like the Fire-bellied toad and the Moor Frog are still abundant.
Other species are declining in numbers like the European hamster and the Spotted souslik, the latter with one of its last strongholds in Europe in central Poland.
On the other hand the country is home to one of Europe’s biggest conservation success stories: the re-introduction of the European bison or Wisent, mainly to the forests of Bialowieza National Park. Here, among wolves and lynx, red deer and wild boar, beaver and otters, a first group of captive-bred bison was released into the wild in the 1950ies after the species got extinct in the wild in the 1920ies. Today their numbers exceed 1.400 individuals and the species turned into a major tourist attraction and source of income for local communities around the National Park.
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