Swiss beech forests added to World Heritage List

The ancient beech forests on the Bettlachstock in the Solothurn Jura and in the Val di Lodano in Ticino are now World Heritage sites.

UNESCO, the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, included them along with nine other forests in Europe in the list of “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”.

In addition to Switzerland, these are located in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia.

“The extension […] adds to the outstanding universal value and integrity of the property, which now comprises 94 component parts across 18 countries,” UNESCO said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The extended property represents an outstanding example of relatively undisturbed, complex temperate forests and exhibits a wide spectrum of comprehensive ecological patterns and processes of pure and mixed stands of European beech across a variety of environmental conditions.”

Solothurn’s Bettlachstock has been a cantonal nature reserve for 35 years, where natural development is left largely undisturbed. The oldest trees go back more than 200 years. In Ticino, the beech forests in question are located in tributaries of the Maggia Valley.

Switzerland has 13 sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List: nine cultural and four natural.