Erdőbényei Fás Legelő Természetvédelmi Terület

The Erdőbényei Fás Legelő Nature Reserve belongs to the Administration of the Aggtelek National Park. It was established in 1990 on 195 hectares in the Erdőbénye Aranyos Valley area. The area's points of interest are the occurrence of opal and the wooded meadow itself, which is the remnant of once extensive, now almost completely eradicated closed forests, characterized by the so‑called legacy trees that stand solitary and scattered across the area. Grazing takes place beneath them, and they also provide cool shade for the meadow animals during the summer heat.

The area can be reached from the Miskolc–Sátoraljaújhely road 37, turning off at Szegilong towards Erdőbénye.

Geography

Very few of the wooded meadows have survived to the present; here in Zemplén this is the only one, the others being located in Csereháton, in Transdanubia and in Szatmár.

The purpose of declaring the area protected is primarily the preservation of the increasingly rare wooded meadow landscape value in the national context, together with its associated floristic and faunistic elements, and the protection of the opal occurrences here as a rare locality.

In the Nature Reserve belonging to the Erdőbénye basin, the rocks of the protected quartz and opal varieties were shaped by the combined effect of post‑volcanic activity and surface‑forming forces.

In the abandoned mine of the area, the country's hardest andesite was once quarried, from which virtually indestructible block stones were produced; near the footpath leading to the meadow there is the remains of another mine pit, containing yellow‑brown, translucently sparkling, shell‑fractured opal pieces, which specialists refer to as liver‑opal extraction. The place was once a favorite spot for opal collectors.

Among the birds, the wood warbler (Sylvia nisoria), the red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio), the golden oriole (Oriolus oriolus), the black woodpecker (Upupa epops), and among the woodpeckers the great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), the middle spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos medius) and the Balkan woodpecker (Dendrocopos syriacus) occur.

Several species also have feeding areas here, the most significant of which are the black stork (Ciconia nigra), the eastern imperial eagle (Aquila heliaca), the steppe eagle (Aquila pomarina) and the short-toed snake eagle (Circaetus gallicus).

Among the mammals, the wildcat (Felis sylvestris) also occurs, but the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), the red deer (Cervus elaphus) and the wild boar (Sus scrofa) are regularly observed.