The idea of a Swiss national park originated with the Swiss Society for Nature Research and this Society played the leading part in its realization. In 1906 the Society set up as part of its own organization a Swiss Nature Protection Commission and charged it to search for an area in Switzerland suitable for establishment as a reserve, in which all the animal and plant life could be protected against interference by man and so could be left entirely to the play of natural forces. It was not easy to find in Switzerland a suitably large area which still retained its original characteristics, was virtually free from human settlement, and contained some wealth of fauna and flora. After a careful survey of the whole country it became clear that the most suitable region was the Lower Engadine, with its isolated valleys on the eastern border of the country. The district in which, at the beginning of the century, bears had still lived was the one in which primitive nature could be found in its truest state.