Portugal

Portugal combines an Atlantic frontage of more than eight hundred kilometres with a mountainous interior and a south of Mediterranean scrub, plus two ocean archipelagos that multiply its natural value. The north keeps oak and birch woods in the Peneda-Gerês range, where the country's last Iberian wolves survive alongside the garrano, a hardy semi-wild horse. The Alentejo contributes the montado, the Portuguese version of the dehesa, with the largest cork oak woodland in the world. The wetlands of the Tagus, the Sado and the Ria Formosa host tens of thousands of wintering waders. Madeira keeps the best-preserved laurel forest on the planet, a relict woodland of the Tertiary and a World Heritage Site. The Azores, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, are one of the best places in the northern hemisphere to watch cetaceans: around a third of all known whale and dolphin species pass through their waters.