Wildlife of Europe

Europe is the most densely settled and intensively farmed of the continents, and for centuries its large animals were in retreat. Wolves, bears, lynx, bison, beavers, vultures and eagles were hunted out of most of their range. Since the 1970s, however, legal protection, forest regrowth on abandoned farmland and deliberate reintroductions have produced one of the most encouraging trends in global conservation. Wolves now live in almost every mainland European country, the European bison has returned from a few dozen zoo animals, and the Iberian lynx has gone from fewer than 100 animals to more than 2,000.

Europe also offers some of the most accessible wildlife watching in the world: bear hides in Finland and Romania, orcas in Arctic Norway, raptor migration over Gibraltar, puffin colonies in Iceland and Scotland, and wetlands full of flamingos, pelicans and cranes.

Europe at a glance

Habitats and the wildlife they support

The Arctic north and tundra

Northern Scandinavia, Iceland, Svalbard and Arctic Russia hold tundra and ice-bound coasts. Polar bears, Arctic foxes, Svalbard reindeer and walruses live on Svalbard. On the mainland, reindeer are herded by the Sámi, and musk oxen have been reintroduced to Norway’s Dovrefjell. The seas around northern Norway attract orcas and humpback whales that follow herring into the fjords in winter.

Boreal and mixed forests

The taiga of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia is Europe’s great wilderness forest. It holds brown bears, wolves, wolverines, Eurasian lynx, moose (elk) and capercaillie, a huge grouse whose males display at spring leks. Finland’s eastern border region is one of the best places in the world to photograph wild brown bears and wolverines from hides.

Temperate broadleaf forests

Most of Europe was once covered in oak, beech and mixed forest. Białowieża Forest, straddling Poland and Belarus, is the last large remnant of primeval lowland forest and a stronghold of the European bison. The Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine hold Europe’s largest populations of large carnivores outside Russia: brown bears, wolves and lynx. Red deer, roe deer and wild boar are widespread, and the Eurasian beaver, reduced to about 1,200 animals by 1900, now numbers well over a million after reintroductions across the continent.

Mountains

The Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Balkans and Scandinavian mountains support Alpine ibex, chamois, marmots and the golden eagle. The Alpine ibex was reduced to fewer than 100 animals in Italy’s Gran Paradiso in the nineteenth century; every ibex in the Alps today descends from that population. The bearded vulture (lammergeier), which feeds mainly on bone, was driven out of the Alps by 1913 and has been successfully reintroduced since 1986. The small, isolated Marsican brown bear survives in Italy’s Abruzzo National Park.

Mediterranean landscapes

The Mediterranean Basin is a global biodiversity hotspot, rich in plants, reptiles and insects found nowhere else. Spain and Portugal hold most of Europe’s vultures, the Spanish imperial eagle, great bustards and the Iberian lynx, which lives in scrub and open woodland where rabbits are plentiful. Islands such as Crete, Sardinia and the Balearics have many endemic reptiles and invertebrates.

Wetlands, rivers and deltas

The Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine is Europe’s largest wetland, with the continent’s biggest colonies of Dalmatian and great white pelicans and hundreds of bird species. Doñana in Spain and the Camargue in France hold greater flamingos, herons, egrets and spoonbills. Hungary’s Hortobágy grasslands and Sweden’s Lake Hornborga host spectacular gatherings of common cranes on migration.

Seas and coasts

Europe’s coasts support huge seabird colonies. Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and Scotland hold millions of Atlantic puffins, gannets, guillemots and kittiwakes. Grey seals and harbour seals breed around British and North Sea coasts. The Mediterranean holds fin whales, sperm whales, striped dolphins and the rare Mediterranean monk seal, whose status improved from Endangered to Vulnerable in 2023 after recovery in Greece and elsewhere. Loggerhead turtles nest on beaches in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.

Iconic mammals

Wolves have returned naturally to countries where they were extinct for more than a century, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. The European Union now holds more than 20,000 wolves, and their return has become one of the most debated wildlife issues in Europe because of attacks on livestock.

The European bison is Europe’s heaviest land animal. It was hunted to extinction in the wild by 1927, and every bison alive today descends from just 12 animals kept in zoos. Reintroductions began in Białowieża in 1952; there are now several thousand free-ranging bison in countries from Poland and Belarus to Romania and the Netherlands.

The Iberian lynx was the world’s most endangered cat in 2002, with fewer than 100 animals in two isolated populations in Spain. A breeding programme, rabbit restoration and wildlife road crossings pushed numbers above 2,000 by 2023, and in 2024 the IUCN moved it from Endangered to Vulnerable.

Birds

Europe has about 550 regularly breeding bird species, and its migration spectacles are world-class.

• White stork, which nests on rooftops and church towers from Spain to Poland and winters in Africa.
• Eurasian eagle-owl, one of the largest owls in the world.
• Griffon, cinereous and Egyptian vultures and the bearded vulture, concentrated in Spain, the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Balkans.
• Atlantic puffin, Vulnerable, with major colonies in Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands and the UK.
• Great bustard, one of the heaviest flying birds, with most of the world’s population in Spain.
• Common crane, greylag goose and barnacle goose in huge migratory flocks.
• European bee-eater, hoopoe, roller and golden oriole, colourful summer migrants in the south.
• Starling murmurations, in which tens of thousands of birds swirl at dusk, most famously in the UK, Denmark and Rome in autumn and winter.

Reptiles and amphibians

• Olm (Proteus anguinus), a blind, pale cave salamander from the Dinaric Karst of Slovenia and Croatia that can live for more than 100 years.
• Fire salamander, alpine newt and great crested newt.
• Hermann’s tortoise and spur-thighed tortoise in Mediterranean scrub.
• Nose-horned viper, Montpellier snake and the European adder, which ranges north of the Arctic Circle.

Marine and freshwater life

• Orcas and humpback whales feeding on herring near Tromsø and Skjervøy, Norway, in winter.
• Bottlenose dolphins in Scotland’s Moray Firth and Wales’s Cardigan Bay.
• Sperm whales off Andenes, Norway, and the Azores (Portugal).
• Atlantic salmon and the Critically Endangered European eel, which spawns in the Sargasso Sea.
• Sturgeon in the Danube and Black Sea, most species now Critically Endangered.

Great wildlife spectacles and when to see them

Top wildlife destinations

Conservation: threats and successes

The main threats

• Intensive agriculture, which has caused steep declines in farmland birds and insects. Europe has lost hundreds of millions of breeding birds since 1980.
• Habitat fragmentation by roads, railways and urban growth.
• Conflict with farmers and hunters over wolves, bears and lynx, and illegal killing of raptors.
• River damming and pollution, which have devastated sturgeon and migratory fish.
• Climate change, shifting species ranges northwards and uphill.

Successes worth knowing

• Rewilding has returned wolves, bears, lynx, beavers, bison, ibex, vultures and white-tailed eagles to much of their former range.
• The EU Birds and Habitats Directives and the Natura 2000 network give legal protection to thousands of sites.
• The Iberian lynx recovery is one of the best-documented cat conservation programmes in the world.
• The Mediterranean monk seal has increased enough to be downlisted from Endangered to Vulnerable.
• The EU Nature Restoration Law, adopted in 2024, sets binding targets to restore degraded ecosystems.

For researchers

• European Environment Agency reporting on species and habitats under the EU nature directives.
• Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme and EuroBirdPortal for long-term bird trends.
• Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe (an IUCN specialist group) for wolf, bear, lynx and wolverine data.
• Rewilding Europe and its partner landscapes for reintroduction case studies.
• Global resources: IUCN Red List, GBIF and Movebank.

Test yourself

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Frequently asked questions

Are there still wild wolves and bears in Europe? Yes. Europe has more than 20,000 wolves in the EU alone and large brown bear populations in Scandinavia, Finland, the Carpathians and the Balkans.

Where is the best place to see bears in Europe? Eastern Finland (near Kuhmo and Kuusamo) and the Romanian Carpathians have hides with very high sighting rates from May to August.

What is Europe’s largest land animal? The European bison, which can weigh up to about 900 kg.

Are there big cats in Europe? Yes, two species of lynx: the widespread Eurasian lynx and the Iberian lynx of Spain and Portugal.

Where can I see puffins in Europe? Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and the UK (for example the Farne Islands, Skomer and Shetland) from about May to August.

Explore more

• Animal profiles: Grey Wolf, Brown Bear, Red Deer, Atlantic Puffin
• On this site: Puffin
• Learn: Landscape ecology and corridors, Conservation biology

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