Visit the Natural Park of Montesinho

The Natural Park of Montesinho is located in Trás-os-montes, abragendo the Municipality of Bragança, and the one of Vinhais. It has about 75 thousand hectares. Temperatures range between -12 ° C and 40 ° C.

It has a heterogeneous relief, with plateaus cut by deep valleys, as well as some mountain ranges, of which stands out the Serra de Montesinho, in the county of Bragança. The altitudes vary between the 1486 meters, in the Mountain range of Montesinho and the 438 meters in the bed of the river Mente.

Shales are the dominant rocks, but granites, ultrabasic rocks and small calcareous stains can still be found.

The Natural Park of Montesinho is crossed by some of the most important water courses of the river basin of the Douro River.

In the area of ​​Bragança, there are the rivers Sabor, Maçãs and Baceiro. Sabor is born on the border with Spain, on the summits of the Sierra de Montesinho, passing a short distance from Bragança. The Apples is born in Spain, and makes the international border in two distinct stretches. Baceiro is also born in Spain, being the smallest of the main rivers, in its route there is an important nursery of trout.

There is a great diversity of fauna and flora in the Natural Park. The heaths, steels and giests, commonly called matos, occupy vast territories of abandoned soils for agriculture, borders of forests or lands once occupied by an autochthonous forest. The matos, and particularly those occurring at higher altitudes, are biotopes of extreme importance for several species of wild fauna. Lameiros, also known as meadows or mountain pastures, are associated with most of the riverine areas. Chestnut groats represent the majority of agricultural land. Holm oak forests, known as Sardinian forests, occur in the lower areas. Finally, oak-negral forests are one of the main types of native tree vegetation that occurs in the Park as part of a continuum that extends south to the Nogueira mountain range.

The Natural Park of Montesinho has about two hundred and fifty species of vertebrates and a high wealth and diversity also of invertebrates.

The presence of the Iberian wolf, the deer, the water mole, the wild cat, the big horseshoe bat and the mouse-de-lameiros stands out. There are about 160 species of birds, including the royal eagle and the black stork.