The Beskid landscapes with mountain forests, extensive mountain pastures and green valleys enchant with the beauty of unspoilt nature. Every tourist, when travelling through the forest wilderness or abandoned, uninhabited valleys of the Low Beskids or beech forests of the highest ranges of the Sądecki Beskids will think that they have an opportunity to see the most genuine, unchanged Carpathian nature. However, this impression is misleading, but it does not mean that the Beskids are not interesting in terms of nature. Their value is evidenced, e.g. by the fact that many nature reserves have been created there and almost the entire area of the Sądecki Beskids has been covered by protection as the Popradzki Landscape Park. On the other hand, the wildest areas of the Low Beskids have been covered by the Magurski National Park, whose western parts are situated in the area of the Gorlicki district.
It is interesting to know that until the Operation Vistula, i.e. expulsion of the Lemko population after WWII, the Beskid valleys situated east of the Poprad Valley in the Jaworzyna Krynicka Range and Low Beskids have been vibrant with life. High towards the mountain ridges, farmlands and grasslands stretched, on many peaks extensive mountain pastures were the summer home for shepherds and herds of cows and sheep. Today, in the midst of deserted valleys, we will see only small villages, single Orthodox churches and sometimes only traces of a cemetery and several stone crosses standing in meadows, but in the past large and populous villages were located there. However, for more than fifty years, the nature took its toll. Subsequent patches of fields and meadows, unfarmed and unmowed, have been absorbed by the forest. Some mountain pastures in the Sądecki Beskids have been even intentionally afforested: once, a large part of the Jaworzyna Range ridge formed a string of open mountain pastures, today only inconspicuous traces of them are left. Only in the Radziejowa Range, there are authentic, ancient mountain forests, changed by human management to a small extent only. Today, the mountains are dominated by beech forests, but we can also find fragments of mixed forests and spruce stands. Near Muszyna, a real treasure has been preserved – a fragment of the lime forest.
Also, many animals live in the mountains. They include large predators: wolves, lynx and bears, as well as birds of prey, inter alia, Lesser Spotted Eagle, which is the symbol of the Magurski National Park. In the wild forests of the Sądecki Beskids, very rare, big capercaillies live. This is not the end of the natural diversity of the Beskids – it is just a small piece of it, however, it is worth wandering through the mountains and forests to see this wealth with our own eyes.
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