Sihlwald
Forest in Zurich, Switzerland
The Sihlwald is a forest and nature reserve in the Sihl Valley of the Swiss canton of Zürich. It is a rare example of a large-scale and original forest, situated on the eastern slopes of the Albis hills to the west side of the Sihl river. Although the forest is owned by the city of Zürich, it is situated outside the city boundary, within the municipality of Horgen and several adjoining municipalities. The Sihlwald now forms part of the Zürich Wilderness Park.
The city of Zürich received the Sihl forest, or Sihlwald, as a gift in 1309 from the Hapsburgers and again in 1524 through the dissolution of the Fraumünster convent. Over the following centuries, the forest provided Zürich with timber and firewood. From 1876 on, there was even a forest railway which facilitated the work in the forest. However, the trees have not been felled since the 1990s; this is due to the actions of forest director Andreas Speich, in order to preserve the forest's unique composition. On August 28, 2009, the Federal Office for the Environment declared the Sihl forest a "regional nature park of national importance". The protection of Sihl forest was established through a forest reserve agreement in 2007 and a cantonal Protection Ordinance in 2008.
The public source identifies “Sihlwald” as forest in Zurich, Switzerland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sihlwald, Forest and Zurich.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 9, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q2285499. Authority coordinates are 47.269, 8.557. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1309, 1524, 1876 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sihlwald” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.