Spain

Spain has the greatest diversity of vertebrates in western Europe, a consequence of its position as a bridge between the European continent and Africa and of a relief that strings together high mountains, arid plateaux, Atlantic marshes and Mediterranean coasts. The dehesa, an open woodland of holm and cork oaks maintained by grazing, is a unique cultural landscape that supports large raptors and ungulates. In the north, the Cantabrian range keeps Atlantic beech and oak forests with brown bear and Iberian wolf; the Pyrenees add alpine fauna such as the bearded vulture and the chamois. Doñana forms the largest marshland system on the continent, an essential stopover for birds migrating between Europe and Africa. The Canary archipelago, volcanic in origin and Macaronesian in biogeography, works as a separate evolutionary laboratory, with giant lizards, relict laurel forest and a marine fauna of resident cetaceans.