Poloniny is located on the Slovak-Polish-Ukrainian border and is immediately adjacent to the Polish Bieszczady National Park and the Ukrainian Užan National Park.
The mountain complex in which the national park was declared is known as Bukovské vrchy .
The name Poloniny comes from the unique mountain ridge meadows located above the forest level, in these parts called poloniny.
In 1993, the Poloniny National Park was included in the network of international biosphere reserves by UNESCO. In June 2007, the Stužica, Havešová and Rožok forests in the Bukovské vrchy Mountains were added to the UNESCO World Natural Heritage List, together with the Vihorlat Forest in the Vihorlatské vrchy Mountains in the Vihorlat Protected Landscape Area and with the forests in Ukraine.
Almost 80% of the Poloniny National Park is covered by forests. The typical character of the landscape is represented by rounded ridges and wet valleys. Sharp rocky hills only rise to the surface in places.
The uniqueness of the area lies in the occurrence of the largest complexes of native beech-fir forests in Europe, which in places pass into the forests, in an extraordinary concentration of rare and endangered species of plants and animals.
The territory of Polonín is characterized by the occurrence of large carnivores - brown bear, wolf of prey, lynx and wild cat. There is also a mountain bison, which occurs in the wild in Slovakia only in this national park.
The main starting point for visiting Polonín is the village of Nová Sedlica. Poloniny is also known as the Dark Sky Park, which was declared the first dark sky area in Slovakia on the occasion of the International Year of Biodiversity 2010.
The Milky Way is perfectly visible in the area and without a telescope it is possible to see several thousand stars (only 200 in cities and only 20 in big cities). The Dark Sky Park, in addition to protecting the night environment, also provides an informative tourist program.
You can also try observing the sky in the Astronomical Observatory on Kolonický sedlo, which is an outpost of the Vihorlat Observatory in Humenné. It is located in an area with very low levels of light pollution.
Its astronomical instruments include the Vihorlat National Telescope (VNT), the second largest telescope in Slovakia, with a main mirror diameter of 1 meter. There is also a planetarium in the area, which was built as part of the Carpathian Sky project.
Observations, as well as other events for schools and the public, are made at the observatory to order .
067 61 Stakčín
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