Sierra de Cardeña y Montoro Natural Park

One of the most remarkable elements of this park is the great diversity of fauna.

The park is located in a sector of Sierra Morena, in the north-eastern region of the province of Córdoba, bordering the Sierra de Andújar Natural Park, in the province of Jaén. The landscape is made up of gentle hills, generally not very steep, and the vegetation is almost equally divided between meadows, reforested pine forests and Mediterranean woodland. The latter is dominated by trees such as holm oak, wild olive, cork oak and gall oak. The undergrowth includes rockrose, rosemary, kermes oak, thyme and other species typical of the Mediterranean forest. In the Escorialejo area there are the only examples of a copse of melojo oak in the province. On the banks of the Yeguas river, the vegetation changes to alder, poplar and willow.There is a great diversity of fauna, with herbivorous mammals (roe deer, fallow deer, red deer and wild boar), carnivorous mammals (wild cat, genet and, most notably, wolf and Iberian lynx), otters in the waters of the Yeguas and, among the birds of prey, the golden eagle, imperial eagle, booted eagle, black vulture and goshawk are the most notable.