Ifrane

Ifrane National Park was created in 2004 in the Moroccan Middle Atlas, around the town of the same name, and protects some 518 km².

It preserves the largest and best-preserved cedar forest in Morocco, formed by the Atlas cedar, a conifer endemic to north-western Africa that can exceed forty metres in height and eight centuries of life. The most famous of its trees, the so-called Gouraud Cedar, was for decades a symbol of the region. The cedar forest mixes with holm oak and Portuguese oak woods at lower altitudes and with high-altitude scrub on the summits, and the park also includes karst lakes such as Dayet Aoua and high-volume springs.

The Barbary macaque population living in these cedar forests is the most important in the world: it is the only wild primate left north of the Sahara and an endangered species, whose main threat is the capture of infants for the illegal pet trade, along with the degradation of the cedar forest. The forest's regeneration is compromised by overgrazing, persistent drought and the decline of the cedar associated with climate change, a process documented with concern for two decades.