Swiss National Park

The Swiss National Park covers 172 km² of the Engadine and the Val Müstair, in the canton of Grisons; across the border it adjoins the Stelvio National Park. The ground rises from 1,400 metres to 3,173 metres at Piz Pisoc. More than half the surface — 51 % — carries no vegetation at all: scree, slabs, ridges. Forest covers 28 %, almost entirely conifers, and alpine grassland 21 %.

What sets this territory apart is not obvious at first sight: nothing here is tended. The federal law that governs it makes it a reserve where flora and fauna are left to their own natural development. No tree is felled, no herd is driven, no animal is fed or culled. Visitors keep to 80 kilometres of official paths, which they may not leave, including where the slope looks open.

The wildlife benefits from this abstention. Red deer number 1,800 to 2,000, above all in the Val Trupchun, the Val Cluozza and the Val dal Botsch; chamois, ibex and marmots are present in numbers. The bearded vulture, on the brink of extinction in the Alps, is the subject of a reintroduction programme in the Val Stabelchod, where birds have been released since 1991. The spotted nutcracker, the park's emblem, holds the conifer forests, and several golden eagle eyries are recorded. Among plants, mountain pine dominates, together with edelweiss and the very rare Ladin whitlowgrass.

The park's standing has grown over time: a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1979, added in April 2021 to the Green List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It ranks among strict nature reserves, the most protective category, and it has a core zone only, with no outer buffer around it. The land belongs to the communes of Zernez, S-chanf, Scuol, Valchava and Lavin, which lease it to the public-law foundation in charge of the park.

Why this place is remarkable

Switzerland has a single national park, and its founding, in 1914, was among the earliest in Europe. A century of abstention has one visible consequence: the forest, almost entirely cleared in earlier centuries to feed lime kilns and win pasture, has rebuilt itself without a single planting. It has another, less visible one — the park has become a long-term observation ground, where one measures what an alpine slope becomes when nobody tends it any more.

History and origin

It began in 1909: naturalists alarmed at the damage being done to nature founded the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature, today Pro Natura, and launched a public subscription — one franc per person — to pay the lease of the Val Cluozza, on the land of Zernez. The Confederation took that lease upon itself on 3 April 1914 by federal decree, and the park was founded on 1 August of the same year. A federal law of 19 December 1980 replaced the decree and set the present regime. The perimeter has kept moving: the Macun lakes, in the commune of Lavin, joined the core zone in 2000.