World Heritage Beech Forest (Buchenwald)

Together with the Limestone Alps National Park, the Dürrenstein-Lassingtal Wilderness Area was declared the FIRST World Natural Heritage Site in Austria by UNESCO.

Thus it is part of only a little more than 200 World Natural Heritage sites worldwide. 12 European countries have come together during the last decade to jointly create the World Natural Heritage Site "Old Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and other regions of Europe".

The copper beech developed into the dominant tree species in Europe after the ice age, until it was pushed back to relatively few locations by man. From the isolated retreat areas in the Alps, in the Dinaric Alps, the Carpathians and the Pyrenees, the beech slowly returned to all of Europe, as far as Scandinavia, after the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.

Since then, the beech forests of various forms have been included in the World Natural Heritage List. In Austria, the Limestone Alps National Park and the Dürrenstein-Lassingtal Wilderness Area participated in this unique, cross-border process.

With the Rothwald primeval forest, the wilderness area brought the only significant spruce-fir-beech primeval forest in the entire Alpine arc into the World Natural Heritage Site. It is the unique selling point of the Wilderness Area within the framework of the entire World Natural Heritage!

In 2017, the Wilderness Area was finally declared by UNESCO as the first World Natural Heritage Site in Austria and is thus in the same category as the Grand Canyon, the Galapagos Islands, the Dolomites or the Great Barrier Reef.

But what does it mean to be a World Heritage Site?

Since natural beech forests in Europe have been reduced to a small number of sites, the last natural and primeval beech forests provide refuges for rare species of fungi, plants and animals. The number of animal species in European beech forests alone is estimated at up to 10,000 species. Due to its importance for many species, some of which are threatened with extinction, the beech forest was therefore already chosen as Biotope of the Year in 1995. Especially the Ural owl returning to Austria is a typical beech (jungle) species.

The administration of the Dürrenstein-Lassingtal Wilderness Area now faces the challenge of securing the title of "World Natural Heritage Site" in the long term. This will be successful above all if the natural jewel is preserved in its substance and if the importance of the wilderness area as an important component for the preservation of natural diversity can be anchored in the minds of fellow humans.