Location:
erm. Kappel-Grünwald train station
placed under protection in 1939;
expansion in 1979 and 1989;
size 950 hectares;
The Wutachschlucht is a narrow valley in the upper Wutach with three gorge-like sections, the lowest of which is also known as Wutachflühen. It cuts through the southern Baar from the eastern High Black Forest eastwards to the eaves of the Swabian Alb, which merges here into the Randen.
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The 60 to 170 meter deep gorges (excluding secondary gorges) extend over 33 kilometers of river and are remarkable in many respects. Their geologically young, prototypical and clearly ongoing formation produces a great diversity of geotopes and biotopes and enables a corresponding wealth of animal and plant species. The gorges are heavily visited by tourists and also played an important role in establishing the idea of nature conservation in southwestern Germany. The Wutachschlucht is part of the Southern Black Forest Nature Park and is under special protection as a designated nature reserve and as part of the Wutach and Baaralb European Bird Sanctuary.
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The Wutach and some of its tributaries have carved a natural profile cut over a distance of barely 20 kilometers as the crow flies through almost all the rock layers of the southern German strata landscape, which fan out to the north for up to 200 kilometers, but here spread out in close groups on the surface one after the other. Due to the uplift of the southern Black Forest, the Mesozoic rock layers were made significantly more inclined than usual (on average 7%) and it was here that they were successively cut by the Wutach. Since the Wutach “only” flows eastwards with a gradient of around 1%, as the gorge progresses it passes into increasingly younger rock layers deposited above it. This created a continuous sequence of rock outcrops from the basement (here mostly granite) through the Triassic to the Jurassic. Since these rocks, when cut through deep erosion, each produce peculiar, very different terrain shapes, one of the most varied and interesting gorge landscapes in Central Europe was created. The gorges are often cut seamlessly into wide valleys and can hardly be seen even from a short distance.
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Biodiversity and wildlife
Of the approximately 2,800 vascular plants in southern Germany, around 1,200 species occur in the Wutach Gorge, including around 40 species of orchids.
The diversity of habitats in the gorge is also reflected in the high number of species in the fauna. Vertebrates, arthropods and mollusks are represented by approximately 10,000 species.
The birdlife is very diverse with almost 80 species for a narrow valley. Mountain warblers, garden warblers and treecreepers typically occur in oak-pine bush forests, blackcaps and wood warblers in maple-linden forests, and mistle thrushes, treecreepers and pine jays in fir-beech forests. In the narrower gorge area you can find peregrine falcons and spotted flycatchers on the rocks, wrens and marsh tits in the gorge forest and on the Wutach itself kingfishers, dippers, gray wagtails and, until recently, goosanders.
Because of the numerous smaller caves, bats occur in some species, but not in large numbers of individuals.
With 590 species of large butterflies, the gorge is home to around half of the species known in Baden.
There are also around 1,400 species of beetles and over 1,000 species of Diptera (mosquitoes, flies).
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Lengths of the gorge stretches
– Upper Gorge: 9 kilometers
(Dietfurter Valley: 5 kilometers)
– Middle Gorge: 7.5 kilometers
(Achdorfer Tal: 7.5 kilometers)
– Lower Gorge (Flühen): 3.5 kilometers
Total Wutach Gorges: 20 kilometers
– Haslachschlucht: 3 kilometers
– Rötenbachschlucht: 2.5 kilometers
– Reichenbachschlucht: 1.5 kilometers
– Lotenbachklamm: 1 kilometer
– Hirschgraben: 1 kilometer
– Gauchach Gorge: 4.5 kilometers
– Gorge: 2 kilometers
– Schleifebächle: 1.5 kilometers
Total side gorges: 17 kilometers
(Excerpt from Wikipedia)