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Donana National Park
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Donana National Park
The "jewel in the crown" is the Doñana National and Nature Park, a territory of great beauty and high ecological value measuring almost three hundred thousand
hectares, the greater part of which belongs to the province of Huelva and the rest, to Seville and Cádiz. Doñana is Spain's largest protected space and one of Europe's
biggest nature reserves.
What was for centuries a hunting ground for Spanish royalty came to be declared a National Park in 1969. Within it there are three ecosystems: the salt marsh, the
forest reserves and the beaches with dunes. It has 875 species of flora; 360 species of birds, of which 127 regularly breed in Doñana; 37 of non-marine mammals; twenty
of freshwater fish; eleven of amphibians, and 21 of reptiles. And amongst these species there are some that are endangered: six plants, eleven birds, one mammal, four
fishes and one reptile. And if we put a name to them, two of those which are in serious danger of extinction are the Iberian lynx (Lynx Pardina) and the Spanish
imperial eagle (Aquila Adalberti).
Due to its privileged geographical situation between two continents and its closeness to the meeting-point of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea at the Strait of
Gibraltar, Doñana is a stopping-off point, a breeding place and a wintering site for thousands of European and African water fowl and land birds. Outstanding are the
greylag goose, the mallard, the flamenco, the spatula, the grey heron, the shoveler, the Muscovy duck, the red-crested pochard, the little grebe, the common coot, the
crested coot, the purple swamphen, the bittern, the dunlin, the white-headed duck, the common pochard, the teal, the cattle egret, the avocet, the plover, the little
bustard, the great bustard, the night heron, the squacco heron, the black stork, the white stork, the crane, the black-winged stilt, and the little tern, amongst
others; not forgetting the numerous presence of birds of prey such as the marsh harrier, the booted eagle, the barn owl, the black kite, the hobby, the red kite, the
griffon vulture, the Eurasian eagle-owl, and the short-toed eagle, some of these – just like the Spanish imperial eagle – being endangered species.
As for mammals, their abundance and diversity is represented, apart from by the endangered Iberian lynx, by the red deer, the fallow deer, the wild boar, the roe deer,
the ichneumon, the polecat, the fox, the European rabbit, the genet, the garden dormouse and the hare; not forgetting the horses and the groups of mares which spend
the greater part of the year in the salt marshes.
Some of the species of amphibians most commonly found in Doñana are the sharp-ribbed newt, the western spadefoot toad and the European tree frog. Moreover, there are
numerous species of reptiles: the Montpellier snake, the viperine snake, the grass snake, the fringe-fingered lizard, the snub-nosed viper, the stripe-necked terrapin,
the spur-thighed tortoise...
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