A river-shaped nature park along the lower Ohře, where free meanders and relict floodplain forests define the landscape.
Dolní Poohří Nature Park
Dolní Poohří Nature Park is a regional protected landscape area in the Litoměřice District of the Czech Republic, established in 2001 to safeguard the lower stretch of the Ohře River. The park follows the river's natural course for about seventeen kilometers, forming a narrow arc only one to three kilometers wide, and covers a total area of roughly forty square kilometers. Its central landscape features are the free, unconstrained meanders of the Ohře and the surviving fragments of softwood floodplain forest that once lined large parts of Central European lowland rivers.
Beyond its river ecology, the park is notable for integrating smaller, strictly protected reserves within a broader regional designation. Natural monuments and nature reserves protect fragments of canyon-like ravines, isolated forest stands, and wetland-influenced backwaters, together sheltering dozens of threatened and protected species. The cultural setting is equally distinctive: small historic towns such as Libochovice, Budyně nad Ohří, and Brozany nad Ohří dot the corridor above the floodplain, contributing chateaus, castles, a Premonstratensian convent, and prehistoric hillfort sites to the park's broader landscape identity.
The park's significance lies in showing how a working, meandering lowland river can still retain a functioning floodplain ecosystem in an intensively used Central European agricultural region. Its combination of protected floodplain woodland, abandoned river arms, oxbow wetlands, and accessible heritage towns makes it a compact but representative example of the cultural-natural landscapes that line the lower Ohře.
