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The range of forest types is large in the forest national park Limestone Alps. They can be found in a confined space, occurring next to each other. The reason for this is that nature has produced tree specialists for different locations who have adapted perfectly to the conditions and extremes. Altitude, exposure, solar radiation, geological subsoil, water availability or soil thickness play a decisive role in the question of which tree and forest types take root naturally.

Beech and fir trees can be found in more temperate locations, they react more sensitively than the spruce to late frosts in spring. On sunny slopes at lower altitudes, particularly species-rich formations of dry, warm limestone beech forests can be found. Pure beech forests, however, are rarely found. In the mining stage, the spruce-fir-beech forests, usually with the addition of sycamore maple and ash, are the most common. If such slopes become drier and poorer in nutrients, the less demanding red pine can prevail. This is why snow heath pine forests are particularly common on dolomite steep slopes. Special forest types also form in habitats that are strongly influenced by water. Alder-rich forests grow on moist slopes, in swamps and in highly dynamic floodplains along the streams. However, the areas of the stream floodplains that are most influenced by water are usually dominated by willows, while in the less frequently flooded areas, ash joins the alders. Many other trees would suffocate in such moist soil, because tree roots also need air to breathe. But in the course of evolution, alders and ash trees have learned to store oxygen in tiny root pores for times of need. That's exactly what maple and beech can't do. If their roots had to endure ten days in stagnant water, they would drown. The floodplains are therefore a place of survivors.

Other special forests are the rare ravine and hillside mixed forests. These include the sycamore-rich deciduous forest, which occurs on shady slopes and in ravines. Its locations are characterized by high humidity and mostly unstable soils. The tree layer is mainly composed of noble deciduous woods such as sycamore maple, ash, mountain elm and often also the summer lime tree. Typical and well-known plants in the herb layer of this forest type are the moon viola, the deer's tongue fern or the forest goat's beard. The extremely rare lime-rich deciduous forest occurs on warm, scree-rich and unstable slopes.

Towards the top, the forests have an ever-increasing proportion of conifers. When the closed forest cover comes to an end, the subalpine spruce, larch-spruce or, more rarely, the larch-pine forests begin. An extraordinary rarity is found on the eastern Warscheneck plateau, which is in a potential Kalkalpen National Park Expansion area – the largest closed carbonate-larch-pine forest in the Alps that has never been used for forestry. Further up, extensive mountain pine stands and alpine lawn communities follow. Only when the climate no longer allows plants to grow does large areas of bare rock come to light.

Author: Mag. Franz Sieghartsleitner, Kalkalpen National Park

After arduous years of conflicts, discussions and negotiations, the Kalkalpen National Park in the south-east of the province of Upper Austria. Exactly 125 years after the establishment of the Yellowstone National Park, the original American idea has also prevailed in this country. The Province of Upper Austria and the Republic of Austria have fulfilled all the requirements for the establishment and operation of the forest national park Limestone Alps.

National parks have the task of protecting rare animal and plant species as well as unharmed, unadulterated scenic beauty. Even an industrial province like Upper Austria needs areas where nature can be completely at home. In recent decades, we humans have proven that we change and endanger everything very quickly and intensively. Instead of power plant constructions, reservoirs, a cannon shooting range, a nuclear waste repository in Bosruck or other nature-destroying development projects, a national park and recreation area of international importance was created in the Eisenwurzen region, between the Steyr and Enns rivers, on an area of over 200 square kilometres, which makes an important contribution to the preservation of Austria's natural heritage. A quarter of a century after its founding, the Kalkalpen National Park today it is one of the strictest forest protected areas in Central Europe and it is the most densely wooded of the alpine parks among the thirteen national parks in the Alps. Biologists have proven that some small areas of primeval forest in the Wald National Park have been preserved completely undamaged. These approximately 30 to 60 hectare primeval forest areas in the Hintergebirge and Sengsengebirge are located in areas that are difficult to access. They are unique hotspots of biodiversity. Many species, such as 41 jungle beetles, to which e.g. the orange-spotted dark beetle, the large flat beetle or the red-necked dark beetle only occur in these valuable jungle areas and are therefore indicators of areas untouched by humans. In the whole of Germany, there are fewer primeval forest beetle species than in these small primeval forest areas in the Kalkalpen National Park, said national park zoologist Dr. Erich Weigand. There are still about 120 breeding pairs of the rare white-backed woodpecker, a pronounced primeval woodpecker species, in the protected area, an international record. The cave ground beetle species (Arctaphenops muellneri) is found worldwide only in the Kalkalpen National Park. These are just some of the natural treasures that were saved with the founding of the national park, almost at the last moment. As late as 1994, only three years before the official establishment of the national park, a new building was built in the already planned natural zone of the Kalkalpen National Park still primeval forest beaten.

Many national park projects have been implemented since the founding of the national park. They directly serve the goal of preserving biodiversity in the national park. An internationally observed example is the population support of lynxes or the efforts to give the almost extinct Danube Urbach trout more habitat again. A lot of work has also been invested in remarkable research projects. This made it possible to gain new insights into the karst water system, the karst springs or the migratory movements of red deer. Together with the Federal Environment Agency and the Austrian Federal Forests, Austria's most modern air and environmental measuring station is operated at Zöbelboden in the Hintergebirge. The effects of air pollutants on the karst water and forest ecosystems have been measured and analysed there for over 30 years. This data is fed into an internationally networked measurement system, where it is also available to the European Union and UN institutions. However, these measurement series are also made available to universities and researchers for further research.

Author: Mag. Franz Sieghartsleitner, Kalkalpen National Park

While the national development of the protected area, from the former Sengsengebirge nature reserve to the official opening of the Kalkalpen National Park in 1997, which required a lot of effort and compromise for a long time, the international recognition took place extremely quickly. Hardly noticed by the regional population, the national park has now found its special international position as a "large-scale alpine forest conservation area" and even plays an outstanding key role in this. In addition to the high naturalness of the area, the decisive factor for this is the natural endowment with over 80% forest cover and the large number of forest biotope types, which range like a mosaic from the deciduous forests of the valley locations, to the montane mixed forests to the subalpine coniferous forests to the alpine crooked wood zone. With this natural endowment, the Kalkalpen National Park within the 13 national parks of the Alps, more than two-thirds of whose total area is above the tree line.   

As early as 1998, immediately after the official opening of the National Park and even before the Hohe Tauern National Park achieved its international recognition, the Kalkalpen National Park recognized as another protected area of the IUCN - the World Conservation Organization. Since then, the National Park Administration has been implementing the strict requirements of IUCN Category II, which contains the definitions for "national parks". The priority is to develop a core national park zone and in which nature is subsequently left to its own devices as far as possible, taking up at least 75% of the protected area area. There are many a stumbling block on this path and it is always to be taken in this natural zone with the aim of being "as close to nature as possible". In addition to this priority nature conservation goal, national parks also serve research, education and human recreation.

Much less excitement was caused by the nomination of the Kalkalpen National Park as a Natura 2000 (EU) area, although it became all the louder afterwards. It took place as early as 1998, but it was not until 2004 that it was included in the list of "protected areas of Community importance for the Alpine region" and subsequently implemented under national law as a European protected area. From this point on, the National Park Administration was commissioned to survey the "favourable conservation status" of all existing EU protected assets, to monitor them on an ongoing basis and, if necessary, to take protective measures. Due to the EU protection status, EU funding is also available for this purpose and so over the years a high level of knowledge about the nature of the protected area has accumulated, which is probably unparalleled in Upper Austria.

Also in 2004, the Kalkalpen National Park another international award, namely as a Ramsar protected area, at the same time the first in Austria with the category "Karst Water". The Ramsar Convention is a transnational "Convention for the Protection of Wetlands of International Importance" and primarily pursues the wise use principle, a well-balanced use of natural resources that is intended to ensure the long-term conservation of wetlands and their living environment. An essential technical basis for this award were the results of the "Interdisciplinary Karst Water Programme National Park Upper Austria. Kalkalpen (1991 bis 1999)". The long-term environmental monitoring programme "Integrated Monitoring" operated by the Federal Environment Agency Vienna in the field of Kalkalpen National Park, in which all inputs from precipitation are recorded and their effects on the ecosystem are scientifically meticulously analyzed. It is the only such program in Austria and it is in comparative exchange with others throughout Europe.  

5,250 hectares of beech forest of the Kalkalpen National Park were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. They are part of the "old European beech and beech primeval forests" and are thus part of the world's largest serial UNESCO World Heritage Site. The designation was quite right, because only here do the Eastern Alps-endemic beech forest society Snow Rose Beech Forest (helleboro nigri-fagteum) and beech-larch forests occur. And with a beech tree that germinated as early as 1474, the oldest beech in the Alps is rooted in a primeval forest area in the northern Sengsengebirge.

Author: Mag. Franz Sieghartsleitner, Kalkalpen National Park