Email: oasi.carloforte@lipu.it
Infoline +39 338 2776307
Manager and guide (booking required): Luciano Durante
LIPU Oasis of Carloforte covers an area of 414 hectares in the western part and about 7 km of coastline.
Here the cliffs overhang the sea, forming a rocky platform up to 130 metres high, with deep inlets such as Cala Vinagra and Cala Fico. Here the landscape is wild and fascinating, unique, so much so that it is in this wild and wonderful environment that a very rare species nests: the Queen’s Hawk, an extraordinary bird of prey that breeds exclusively on the sheer cliffs of islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
It is precisely on this coast that around 100 pairs of falcons arrive from Madagascar every summer to nest. This is also an important stopover and nesting place for many other bird species, such as the kestrel, buzzard and peregrine falcon, the extremely rare Corsican seagull with its distinctive coral-red beak, the tufted cormorant, the Sardinian warbler, the Sardinian magnanina, the little Whitethroat and the lonely sparrow.
It is also possible to admire other unique animal species, such as the Sardinian discoglossus, a typical Sardinian amphibian, with its characteristic heart-shaped pupil and disc-shaped tongue, and the Whip Snake, a yellow snake.
The area is characterised by a garrigue-like vegetation, rich in low and scattered shrubs. The Sea Fennel, two important Sardinian-Corsican endemics: the Greek Limonium and Seseli di Padre Bocconi, as well as lentisk, broom, rosemary, myrtle and Aleppo pines, but above all the endemic Maritime Astragalus, a true botanical rarity, flourish here.
