National Parks
Teide National Park
By h.b. - Sep 24, 2007 - 8:53 AM
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The oldest of the four National Parks on the Canary Islands, Teide was declared a national park in 1954.
Covering 18,990 hectares in the centre of Tenerife, it is also the largest, with its volcanic landscape one of the most spectacular in the world.
It’s dominated by the highest mountain on Spanish territory and the highest on any Atlantic island, Mount Teide, a stratovolcano, still considered active, and which reaches up to 3,718 metres.
Mount Teide is located in the centre of a colossal ancient depression, which was formed some 150,000 years ago and is known as La Caldera de las Cañadas. Las Cañadas are shaped by two semi-craters, which are themselves separated by the weird and wonderful shapes of petrified lava known as the Roques de García.
Teide last erupted in 1909, but the last big eruption was in 1798, when 12 million cubic metres of lava poured out of a fissure on the western flanks of Pico Viejo, just to the west of the main peak. The eruption lasted for 92 days and formed what are known today as the ‘Narices del Teide,’ ‘Teide’s Nostrils.’
Pico Viejo, otherwise known as Chahorra, has a crater measuring 800 m across, while Teide’s crater is in fact formed by the two craters of La Rambleta, 850 m in diameter and 3,565 m high, and within that, el Pilón de Azúcar, 3,718 metres high and 80m across. There is still some residual volcanic activity in the Pilón de Azúcar in the form of fumaroles of steam and sulphur reaching temperatures up to 86 oC.
The National Park is home to a huge diversity of flora which has adapted to the extreme conditions here, where the high altitude is accompanied by intense sunlight, lack of moisture and huge variations in temperature.
Only two species of trees are capable of surviving the arid, high landscape: the Canary Island cedar and the Canary Island pine, while lichen is the only vegetation to be found on the peaks and on the more recently created fields of lava.
Many of the species found here are either endemic to the Islands (58), to Tenerife (33), or to the Park itself (12). Alpine broom is the most common, with the Teide broom one of the main sub species to be seen. The Teide bugloss, which grows on pumice stone soils, and the Teide violet are two other species native to the park.
There are relatively few species of vertebrate fauna in the Teide National Park: they include three reptile species which are native to the islands - the Canary Island wall gecko, the Canary Island lizard, and the Canary Island skink – and some 20 species of bird. Only half the bird species recorded in the Park nest here, however. Bats are the only native mammals. Other species introduced include mouflon, which numbers some 500 animals, rabbits and the Algerian hedgehog.
Invertebrate fauna is the real star, with over 700 recorded species: groups with the most species are spiders, beetles, dipterans (which include flies and mosquitoes), hemiptera (true bugs) and hymenoptera (which include ants, bees and wasps).
A large part are endemic (50%), with 70 species found only in the National Park.
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