Morocco

Morocco is the most mountainous country in North Africa, and that backbone explains its natural wealth: the Rif and the three Atlas chains hold back the Atlantic moisture and create islands of forest on the very threshold of the Sahara. The Middle Atlas grows the largest Atlas cedar woods in the world, the habitat of the Barbary macaque, the only primate that lives naturally north of the desert. Towards the south and east, the vegetation opens out into esparto steppe, stony hamada and dune erg, with dorcas gazelles, fennec foxes and horned vipers. The Atlantic coast, washed by cold and productive waters, sustains the largest argan woodland on the planet and wetlands such as Souss-Massa and the Merja Zerga lagoon, stopovers for birds migrating between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.