Global 200 Ecoregions

Conservation Action at the Crossroads of Civilisation Mediterranean Shrublands & Woodlands


 
Major Habitat Type
Mediterranean Shrublands & Woodlands

Biogeographic Region
Palearctic, Afrotropical

Location
Southern Europe, Northern
Africa, Western Asia



Act Now

Biological Diversity

The People

The Threat

The Challenge

The Response

Current Efforts


Summary

with a sunny and mild climate, a huge, virtually-enclosed sea, spectacular mountain landscapes, and a narrow strip of densely-populated coastal communities. The Mediterranean harbours one of the Earth's only Mediterranean shrublands, a major habitat type found in only five ecoregions around the world, all of limited area. Collectively, though, these shrublands contain 20 percent of the world's plant species, most of which are endemic to their particular ecoregion.

The human footprint has been evident around the Mediterranean for almost longer, and more prominently, than anywhere on Earth. Upon its countless islands, along its river deltas and through its encircling, varied coast, the Mediterranean has witnessed the rise and fall of human civilisations as ancient and important as the Phoenician, Egyptian, Minoan, Greek and Roman. The accumulated environmental impacts of millennia of human occupation has been exponentially aggravated in the past two centuries by increasing industrialisation and development. Many of the Mediterranean's unique natural features are in immediate and constant risk, threatening species and undermining the quality of human life.



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