Wildlife Watching

The Picos de Europa National Park is one of the best places in Spain to observe mountain wildlife, from the charismatic to the merely startling. The most visible large mammal is the Cantabrian chamois (rebeco), a compact and sure-footed member of the goat family that inhabits the limestone ridges at all elevations. The park population is estimated at around 8,000; on most walks above 1,500 metres you will see small groups moving along the cliff edges.

Golden eagles are resident and conspicuous, circling the ridges from mid-morning. Griffon vultures are seen daily and can gather in numbers at carcasses. Egyptian vultures summer in the park. Capercaillie (urogallo) live in the beech forests of the western massif — hearing one before dawn in the breeding season is memorable even if you never see the bird. The wolves of the Ándara and Liébana areas are elusive but occasionally encountered on early-morning walks in the eastern part of the park. Brown bears require specific searching in the remotest western valleys; guided bear-watching tours operate from towns on the western edge of the park.

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The Cantabrian brown bear is genetically distinct from all other European brown bear populations — more closely related to bears from Scandinavia than to those in the Pyrenees, due to a different refugium population during the last ice age. The western Cantabrian population, centred on the Picos and adjoining forests, numbers around 350–400 animals and has been recovering slowly for two decades after near-extinction in the 1990s. They are rarely seen by casual visitors but leave traces — overturned rocks, clawed trees, footprints in mud — throughout the more remote valleys.

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