Thayatal National Park

Thayatal National Park is a 13.3 square kilometer Austrian national park in the Lower Austrian border area with the Czech Republic, connecting to the Czech Podyji National Park on the other side of the frontier. Its steep hillside forests along the Thayatal make it one of the most striking breakthrough valleys in Austria, with a gneiss mountain at its highest point around which the Thaya river flows. It was founded in 2000 under the Lower Austrian National Park Act, following an agreement between the republic and the federal state reached in 1997, and is classified IUCN Category II. Part of its core zone is certified as WILDForest by the European Wilderness Society, with two kilometers of the Thaya certified as a WILDRiver.