Northern Velebit National Park

Northern Velebit National Park
Map showing the location of Northern Velebit National Park
Map showing the location of Northern Velebit National Park
Location of Northern Velebit National Park in Croatia
LocationLika-Senj County, Croatia
Nearest citySenj
Area109 km2 (42 sq mi)
EstablishedJune 17, 1999 (1999-06-17)
Visitors15,100 (in 2010)[1]
Websitehttp://www.np-sjeverni-velebit.hr/

The Northern Velebit National Park (Croatian: Nacionalni park Sjeverni Velebit) is a national park in Croatia that covers 109 km2 of the northern section of the Velebit mountains, the largest mountain range in Croatia. Because of the abundant variety of this part of the Velebit range, the area was upgraded from a nature reserve[2] in 1999, and opened as a national park in September the same year.

The whole of the Velebit range is a "nature park", a lesser conservation category. Another national park on Velebit is the Paklenica on its southern side.

In 2017, the beech forests within the national park were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe because of their testimony to the ecological history of forest dynamics within Europe since the last Ice Age.[3]

  1. ^ "DZS: U nacionalnim parkovima 2010. više posjetitelja". mint.hr (in Croatian). 8 March 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Abraham was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Retrieved 3 September 2022.