Tatra National Park (Slovakia)

Tatra National Park, established on 1 January 1949, is the oldest of Slovakia's nine national parks and protects part of the Tatra Mountains in the country's north, covering about 738 square kilometers with an additional 307 square kilometer buffer zone. The park shares a natural border with Poland, and cooperative protection efforts between the two countries since the early twentieth century led to the designation of a UNESCO transboundary biosphere reserve. It contains Gerlachovsky stit, at 2,655 meters the highest peak in Slovakia, along with more than 100 mountain lakes, about 300 caves and 600 kilometers of hiking trails, and it shelters diverse flora and fauna, including the endemic Tatra chamois.