National Parks
Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park
By h.b. - Jul 11, 2007 - 8:02 PM
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The Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park, in the Aragón Pyrenees in Huesca province, is dominated by the glacier-topped massif of Monte Perdido (‘the lost mountain’), rising up to a height of 3,335 m, with the peaks of the Tres Sorores – Monte Perdido itself, Cilindro and Soum de Ramond - looking down onto the four valleys of Ordesa, Pineta, Añisclo and Escuaín.
The park is a land of sharp contrasts, from the arid landscape of the high grounds, where any rainfall and ice-melt disappears into cracks in the rocky ground, to the lush green of the valleys below, blanketed with forests and meadows, with the water forming waterfalls as it flows through the ravines.
The original area of Ordesa y Monte Perdido – the Ordesa Valley – was declared a National Park by Royal Decree in 1918. The park was extended to the 15,608 hectares it covers today in 1982, and forms, along with the Viñamala Hunting Reserve, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and is also classified as a World Heritage Site and a special protection area for birds.
The variety of ecosystems found here have both Atlantic and Mediterranean influences, with a rich variety of flora and fauna
Extensive forests of beech are seen growing on the valley slopes, together with oak, birch, ash and willow. The higher slopes are covered with forests of black pine, giving way, in the high meadows above a height of 2,500 m, to smaller species of flora, many of them native, which have adapted to this harsh environment.
Animal species abound, from the Pyrenean muskrat and wild boar, to the mountain cat and marmot.
Birds of prey found here include the Golden Eagle, Royal Owl, and the bearded vulture, or ‘quebrantahuesos,’ for which feeding stations are set up in the Escuaín area of the park as part of a recovery plan underway in Aragón.
The park was the last refuge of the Pyrenean Ibex, a species which had reduced to just ten animals in 1993 when a management plan was brought in to preserve the species. It became extinct when the last Pyrenean Ibex was found dead in the Park in January 2000.
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