Serbia

Serbia combines the Pannonian plain of the north with the Dinaric and Balkan mountains of the south, and has the Danube as its great natural axis. At the Iron Gates, the river squeezes between limestone cliffs to form the largest gorge in Europe, a bottleneck for migrating birds and former sturgeon territory now blocked by dams. Mount Tara keeps mixed forests with a relict conifer, the Serbian spruce, which survived the glaciations in a minute area and grows naturally nowhere else. To the north, the Deliblato sands form the largest continental dune system in Europe, a fragment of sandy steppe with a flora and fauna of its own. The canyons of the Uvac and the Mileševka, with their incised meanders, are the heart of the griffon vulture's recovery in the Balkans.