There are seven national parks in Austria. These parks have a combined area of 2,376 km², which is 2.8% of the total area of Austria. They include each of Austria's most important natural landscape types — alluvial forest, Alpine massif, Pannonian steppe and rocky valleys.
Austria's national parks are:
- Donau-Auen National Park
- Gesäuse National Park
- Hohe Tauern National Park
- Limestone Alps National Park
- Neusiedler See – Seewinkel National Park
- Nock Mountain National Park
- Thayatal National Park
All of Austria's national parks meet ICUN Category II standards with the exception of the Nock Mountain National Park. The parks are managed by contracts between one or more of the federal states and the Austrian government. The financing is shared equally between the Austrian government and the province. The parks provide the public with educational services, information, and leisure activities.
Famous quotes containing the words national, parks and/or austria:
“Being a gentleman is the number one priority, the chief question integral to our national life.”
—Edward Fox (b. 1934)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free- masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)