Tunisia

Tunisia is the smallest of the Maghreb countries and yet, in less than eight hundred kilometres, it runs the whole way from humid Mediterranean woodland to desert. To the north, the Kroumiria keeps cork oak and marcescent oak woods with Barbary stag and wild boar; the centre opens into steppe and great salt lagoons such as Chott el Djerid, and the south enters the Grand Erg Oriental. Lake Ichkeul is a case unique in the world: it receives fresh water in winter and salt water from the Mediterranean in summer, and that alternation sustains submerged meadows that feed hundreds of thousands of wintering waterbirds. In the Gulf of Gabès, the Posidonia seagrass meadows formed one of the largest fish nurseries in the Mediterranean, and the islets of Zembra hold an enormous colony of Scopoli's shearwater.