A long Natura 2000 corridor of floodplain forests, meadows and peatlands along the Oder River in southwestern Poland.
Łęgi Odrzańskie
Łęgi Odrzańskie is a large Natura 2000 protected landscape in southwestern Poland, stretching more than one hundred kilometers along the middle course of the Oder River. The site combines a special protection area for birds (PLB020008) and a special area of habitat conservation (PLH020018), which were officially merged in 2019 and readjusted in 2022, and now cover roughly 21,350 hectares across Lower Silesian Voivodeship, with a small northern edge reaching into Lubusz Voivodeship.
The protected area preserves the remains of a once vast and continuously marshy Oder valley. Today it takes the form of a mosaic of floodplain forests, wet meadows, peatlands, oxbow lakes, willow thickets, alder carrs and riverine oak-hornbeam woodland that follow the river's natural corridor through the Pradolina Wrocławska, Obniżenie Ścinawskie and Pradolina Głogowska mesoregions.
Ecologically, the site is most notable as one of the most important riverine bird areas in Central Europe. It holds the region's largest populations of the middle spotted woodpecker and the whooper swan, more than a hundred breeding bird species, and it carries both European and Polish red-list species across plants, invertebrates, fish, amphibians and mammals. The site also qualifies as an Important Bird Area (IBA PLB089) of European rank.