Tatras sees record number of tourists in 2016
Last year, the Tatra National Park (TPN) received a record 3.5 million tourists, Szymon Ziobrowski, the Park’s director, announced on Tuesday.
“We had over three and a half million entries into the Tatra National Park over the last year. We welcomed three million two hundred thousand tourists the year before. No negative impact of such massive tourist numbers has been noticed. Remember that you must stick to marked trails when hiking in the Tatras and that is absolutely important, because as long as tourists keep to marked paths, the impact they leave on the fauna is not that serious. We haven’t observed any major changes in animal behaviour patterns, either. On the contrary, chamois, marmot and bear populations are doing quite well,” Ziobrowski explained.
Ten years ago, over two million tourists visited the Polish Tatras, and their numbers have been on the rise since then.
The Tatra Mountains enjoy peak popularity in the summer season. In July and August, almost one and a half million people come to Poland’s highest mountain range.
The TPN’s director judged that a vast majority of tourists move around the Tatras observing the Park’s rules and respecting the wildlife.
“Unfortunately, you may come across individuals who leave litter along the trail or spoil the environment in other ways, but the overall situation of Tatra wildlife is good,” he said.
Morskie Oko Lake is the most popular spot in the Tatras, attracting nearly half of all tourists. Most of them are Polish, but last year saw the first flow of tourists from Asia.
The Tatra National Park has 275km of marked tourist trails offering varying difficulty levels: from easy to very demanding ones, equipped with safety features such as chains, step irons, and ladders.
Source: PAP
13.01.2017
Other articles in this section
Podkarpackie/ Bieszczady Mountains are home to a growing number of European bison
551 European bison live in the Bieszczady Mountains according to this year`s inventory. At the end of last year, there were nearly 500 individuals, the spokesman of the Regional Directorate of State Forests in Krosno, Edward Marszałek told.
Survivors - Animals that Survived Thanks to Polish Naturalists
Poland is home to expansive green areas and abundant in regions that can provide a natural habitat for different animal species. Nonetheless, many of them are at risk of extinction. Luckily, this process is often reversible - Polish researchers and environmentalists have demonstrated many times that endangered animal species can be successfully saved from extinction.
About Polska
The film presents the most beautiful places in Poland from the Tatra Mountains to the Baltic Sea, including national parks, big and small cities, Masurian lakes as well as sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List such as the Royal Salt Mine in Wieliczka, wooden tserkvas of the Carpathian Region, the historic centre of Warsaw and the Old City of Zamość.
Ospreys Online
The Lipka Forest District in north-western Poland looks is home to one of the few osprey nests. New online transmission feeds made available by the State Forests has made it possible for us to track the life of a bird family. This is worth doing especially now, because the female osprey lays eggs at the turn of April and May. After five weeks baby birds hatch from the eggs. At this moment, two birds in the RoSzponka and Szuwarek nests are expecting hatchlings.
We know more about wolf territories in Poland
As a result of protection measures, wolves return to their former refuges in Western Poland. In order to correctly assess the size of the population of these predators it is necessary to know the areas of their territories and population densities. Research carried out in the Drawa Forest provides the first data on this subject.