Like a duck to water! – Kiskunság National Park Directorate Visitor Centre

In the central part of our country, embraced by two large rivers, the Danube and the Tisza, there is a unique landscape of flat plains, which, despite its apparent monotony, includes a wide variety of habitats. It bears the mark of both the constant changes in nature and the signature of generations of people living here. The Kiskunság National Park was established in 1975 - the second in the country - to protect the natural values of the Kiskunság landscape.  Covering an area over 51,000 acres, the nine-unit national park's characteristic habitats include the Danube's saline steppe and lakes, the dunes, extensive grasslands and sand forests of the sandy ridges, the marshes and swamps of Turjánvidék, and the backwater, floodplain forests and saline steppes of the Tisza. They contain many rarities of nature and the landscape that can only be seen here. Two-thirds of its territory is a biosphere reserve. The Upper-Kiskunság Lakes, the Upper-Kiskunság-Steppe and Lake Kolon are wild wetland habitats of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, and Lake Kolon is also considered the only biogenetic reserve in Hungary. In the House of Nature, the visitor centre of the Kiskunság National Park Directorate (KNPI) in Kecskemét, children and adults can learn a lot of useful information about the typical habitats of the Danube-Tisza area, old crafts and natural assets of the area. 

The permanent exhibition at the House of Nature also presents the history of nature conservation in Hungary and all of Hungary's national parks. Visitors can also gain information about tourist services, activities and conditions for visiting the protected areas, and can buy informative materials, educational brochures, maps, posters and souvenirs. Most of the exhibitions are interactive, so even younger visitors will enjoy learning. The institution is dedicated to raising the ecological awareness of future generations. Pre-registered groups of pre-school and students can request nature sessions and lectures, which teachers can find out about on the knp.hu website. The aim of environmental education here is to give direction and content to children's instinctive attunement to nature, to help them develop environmentally aware attitudes so that they become adults who understand, respect and care for nature. For several years, the House of Nature has been running a series of nature lectures called “afternoon green tea”, in which national park staff and external experts give professional lectures on a variety of nature conservation topics.