Portugal is home to some of the rarest creatures in Europe. Northern Portugal has hills and forests teeming with bird and animal life, while the south’s scorched plains and coastline also support their fair share of fauna.
Iberian Lynx
The Peneda-Garęs National Park is located in the extreme north-west of Portugal. The park has a wide variety of forests, peat bogs and groves. It is also home to wolves, wild boar, golden eagles, garranos and vultures amongst many others.
A large part of Portugal is covered by forest. Large areas of forest have been destroyed over the last few years and in 2005 this problem was aggravated by a severe drought affecting Mainland Portugal. In the year to September 2005, three quarters of Mainland Portugal saw less than half the normal rainfall and the remaining quarter less than 60%.
Portugal’s leading ornithological society is the Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo de Aves, which runs government-funded projects to map the distribution of Portugal’s breeding birds.
Portugal
