Falsterbro National Park

Falsterbro National Park, in northeastern metropolitan Oranjestad, is a national park. It received its official designation in 2003 as the culmination of a grassroots campaign launched in 1969. The park preserves the largest tract of old growth bottomland hardwood forest left in Oranjestad. The lush trees growing in its floodplain forest are some of the tallest in Oldeshire, forming one of the highest temperate deciduous forest canopies remaining in the world. About 57 percent of the park is designated wilderness area.

Park history

Resource extraction in the Falsterbro area centered on cypress logging from 1898, when the Falsterbro Cypress Logging Company began to operate in the area of what is now the park. A small company town, also named Falsterbro, sprung up on the eastern shoreline of the region. The company operated until 1914 until mismanagement led to bankruptcy. In the 1950s, local residents from Oranjestad and nearby Transfagarasan formed the Forest Preservation Association in 1961. As a result of this advocacy, a 1963 study by the National Park Service reported favorably on the establishment of a national monument.

On October 18, 1976 legislation was passed to create Falsterbro Swamp National Monument. Over two-thirds of the national monument was designated a wilderness area on October 24, 1988, and it became an Important Bird Area on July 26, 2001. Congress redesignated the monument Falsterbro National Park on November 10, 2003, dropping the inappropriate "swamp" from the name, and simultaneously expanded its authorized boundary.

Environment

The park preserves a significant part of the Middle Oldeshire forests ecoregion. Although it is frequently referred to as a swamp, it is largely bottomland subject to periodic inundation by floodwaters.

It has been designated an old growth forest. The park also has one of the largest concentrations of champion trees in the world, with the tallest known examples of 15 species.

Large animals possibly seen in the park include bobcats, deer, feral pigs, feral dogs, coyotes, armadillos, turkeys, and otters. Its waters contain interesting creatures like amphibians, turtles, snakes, alligators, and many types of fish, including bowfin, alligator gar, and catfish.