Polish national park in bid to protect spring flowers

Teaming up with local government authorities, the Tatra National Park has launched an annual public awareness campaign—imaginatively called Hocus Crocus—to educate tourists about the need to protect these eye-pleasing but extremely delicate purple flowers.

Every spring, the Tatra National Park’s extensive carpets of crocuses draw in thousands of tourists, according to the park’s Jan Krzeptowski-Sabała.

The park’s Chochołowska Valley alone attracts up to 6,000 visitors a day when crocuses are in full bloom in mid-April, Krzeptowski-Sabała has told Poland’s PAP news agency.

Despite patrols by park officials and volunteers, some tourists were in previous years not careful enough to keep off the flowers, damaging them with their blankets or even cars and trampling on them while taking selfies to proudly share on social media. Some even barbecued right in the middle of the blossoming vegetation, according to park officials.

Crocuses are particularly plentiful in the park’s mountainous terrain and on its high-lying meadows where sheep graze.

The variety of the crocus growing in the Tatra National Park, formally known as Crocus scepusiensis, is protected under Polish law.

(gs)

Source: PAP