The nature of the Erzgebirge has been intensively shaped by human intervention since the first wave of settlement in the Middle Ages and has given rise to a diverse cultural landscape. In particular, mining with dumps, dams, ditches and pits also directly shaped the landscape and the habitats of plants and animals in many places. A selection of historically largely original preserved technical monuments as well as individual monuments and material entities related to mining (17 on the Saxon side and five on the Czech side) have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Mining Region Ore Mountains since 2019.