Water, woodland, pasture and rock habitats are the formative elements of the Gesaeuse National Park. Because of their particular significance they have been incorporated into the National Park's logo in the form of blue, green and grey stripes.

Starting down in the valley beside the 'blue' Enns, as the walker strides on through the high altitudes, he reaches the zone of the 'green' woods and pastures, stretching on upwards to the region of the alpine meadows. These are overshadowed by the encircling 'grey' ring of towering Dachstein limestone crags.

In the realm of rock and stone we find ourselves in the border zone of life for both animals and plants. Here only specialists and well adjusted 'survival artist' species can exist. They colonise crevices and rock falls in the Hochtor Group and on the Buchstein; or, like the chamois, they drift far down into the valleys with scree streams.

The woodlands in the Gesaeuse National Park are characterised by their unspoilt naturalness and by their variety. Both are the result of the remarkable differences of altitude and the steepness of the terrain. Between the floor of the Enns valley and the peak regions of the Hochtor Group and the Buchstein there is an altitude difference of almost 1800 meters. From the lowland forests along the Enns to the larch woods and stone pines on the Zinoedl, from the gorge woods in the Hartelsgraben to woods of Dolomite scots pines in the Johnsbach valley, one finds an array of highly distinctive kinds of woodland. Besides rare varieties of woodpeckers and owls, one also comes across the spoor of the wild animals, that still find a place of retreat here.

Embedded in the belt of green woodland are the colourful Gesaeuse alpine pastures, providing a home for a particularly rich fauna and flora.

The Enns represents the backbone of the Gesaeuse National Park and is home to many endangered varieties of plants and animals. On its banks, for example, the common sandpiper, the dipper, and the grey wagtail, build their nests. Above all it is the graylings and brown trout that play in its waters, but so too do endangered varieties, such as the Ukrainian river lamprey. The lowland forests and the gravel banks alongside the river offer habitats particularly worth preserving; they are in keeping with the bio dynamics of the still largely unspoilt Enns.

One can also interpret the three colours as the essential elements of a natural landscape. Solid rock slowly but steadily eroded into fine material through the action of water represents the basis or, so to speak, the "building material" for the landscape.

Finally water carries the fine material down the valley sides in runnels or detritus channels, depositing it in the Enns. Here it builds up gravel banks, or it collects around the fringes of the streams of debris and comes to rest again. And now the first pioneering plants can establish themselves and over the course of hundreds of years a forest can grow again on the new sediments.

Again, because of the effects of the frost, for example, (the action of water, once more) and over the course of many years, fissures and crevices can develop where the first rocks break away from the massive crags. Here fine sediment slowly collects and the first plants germinate, provided they can adjust themselves to the extreme habitat. Here too we find the transition of "grey" into "green", with the "blue" water as the linking element.

Acting as a formative agency, and as an unstoppable moving force, water also appears again and again as the "blue linking thread" that gives coherence to everything in the Gesaeuse National Park (and this element is represented graphically in the Gesaeuse National Park's corporate logo).