The habitat was formed on a moraine of the Mindel glaciation and forms one of the few bogs in the Alpine foothills on the east side of the Traun River. Up to the time that humans began to interfere with nature, a bog landscape with its variety of flora and fauna was able to develop. Due to cultivation of the bog landscape by man (drainage, peat-working, litter-harvesting etc.) the 3.4 ha Gmöser Moor can today be designated as a carr or fen which the original forms of flora and fauna have survived.
This was the reason that the Gmöser Moor was declared to be a natural preserve in 1987.